


Murder and Mercy - The Timestamps For Ya'aburnee

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Series: Ya'aburnee [3]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, Dubious Consent, Explicit Sexual Content, Fluff, Gaslighting, Graphic Violence, Harpsichord Porn, Just Lots of Sex in General, M/M, Orgasm Delay, Restraints, Slightly dominant Will, Teasing, Timestamp, instructions, straight up smut, very helpless Will and a very smug Hannibal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-23
Updated: 2014-06-05
Packaged: 2018-01-26 05:10:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 36,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1675898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Will looks distraught, flushed and shaking, hair a mess of gorgeously tangled curls outlined only by the light against the bedspread that shares their color. Hannibal shifts his hand, just enough, and Will sobs. </i>
</p><p>A timestamp that occurs between Boucherie and part 4 of <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/series/103067">Ya'aburnee</a>. You don't have to have read the series to date to understand this fic, nor to enjoy it, but it's there if you would like to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Count Well

**Author's Note:**

> Sooooooooo we did a thing.
> 
> Seven. We did seven things.

He’s still surprised, pleasantly, that Will lets him do this at all. But, trust does go two ways. As bound and splayed as Will is in front of him now, so Hannibal has been with his secrets, his desires, his soul. Will makes him just as helpless with a soft word as Hannibal does with a soft touch.

And the leather really is just so beautiful around his wrists, pulled taut and bound to the headboard.

Will looks distraught, flushed and shaking, hair a mess of gorgeously tangled curls outlined only by the light against the bedspread that shares their color. Hannibal shifts his hand, just enough, and Will sobs.

“No, Will, not yet,” he murmurs, stroking cool knuckles over the inside of Will’s thigh, up to his knee, bent and splayed out wide in his pleasure. “Not this one. This one you will earn. I want you to count to ten for me.”

Another shift, another wail, and Hannibal leans in to breathe against him, smell the delicious spiciness of his arousal, of the exhaustion belying it. He will sleep for hours after this, relaxed, refreshed. It’s what he needs. It’s what Will asked him for.

“To ten, Will,” he reiterates softly, “And you shall not stutter, or you will begin again.”

 _Shall_. The word draws a laugh, unsteady but there all the same, and sharpens into a hard sigh as Hannibal’s nails trace red lines against the inside of his thigh.

Hannibal’s fingers are motionless, pressed inside Will just enough to graze along the particular spot that cracks Will like porcelain, a promise of relief but none granted, and as much as Will tries to shift against them, he finds no purchase.

His hands pull tight against the leather, eyes dark, shadowed beneath his hair in the low lights.

“One,” Will breathes, chest rising and falling slowly, strained but measured.

“T-Two,” he manages, and hisses annoyed between his teeth with the consonant gets caught. “Fuck.”

Hannibal just smiles, spreads his fingers and curves them up just so, just enough to have Will panting and gasping, head back and lips parted, tilted at the corners.

“Again,” he prompts, leaving his fingers where they are.

Will has proven to be beautifully responsive to stimulation here, and wonderfully easy to condition with rewards. Positive reinforcement.

_You obey, and I will make this very much worth your suffering._

The leather snaps taut as Will pulls against it, frustration flaring hot through his cheeks and the clench of his jaw and his hands now curled into futile fists.

Infuriatingly patient. Impossibly calm. Will finds himself loathing Hannibal in a way he hasn’t ever experienced before, an irritation drawn from a deep well of affection for the man that smiles so easily at him as he struggles.

“One,” Will begins again, a little less steady than before. “Two. Three.”

He stops himself, chewing his lip to worry away some of the nerves now standing on edge, watching Hannibal rather than the way his length lies full and stiff against his own stomach.

“Four,” he seethes softly, scarcely letting his lips move over the fricative that he knows would trip him up.

 _Breathe_ , Will insists to himself, tracing his tongue along the inside of his lip.

“Five.”

Hannibal’s smile warms. He draws his fingers in a gentle massage around Will’s prostate and revels in the gasp it draws. The next will give him trouble, sibilants notorious for being a difficult phoneme, and Will’s breath is hissing between his teeth in the most telling manner.

“Halfway there,” he praises him, ducking his head to draw soft lips over Will’s nipple, enough to have it peak, to feel Will shudder with the sensation of it. He doesn’t rush Will to keep speaking, his release is entirely in his hands and he can reach it at his own pace.

Hannibal is patient. Very, very patient.

“Perhaps, that is deserving of reward.”

He withdraws his fingers, to the surprised and more than a little pleased sound from Will.

Will is ready, a long breath held burning in his lungs to spit the next numbers out as quickly as he can, but Hannibal hears him part his lips, determined to finish the last numbers in a breath, and takes his cock in his mouth before he can get past the first letter.

“Si-shit,” Will gasps suddenly, mouth falling open as he watches Hannibal swallow him whole. His eyes fall heavy-lidded, watching for as long as he can before they roll closed with a groan ripped out of the tightness snarled in his stomach. He rolls his hips to drive himself into the warmth of Hannibal’s mouth, pulse thrumming quick against his tongue, so close - so fucking close that he presses back into the pillow and bites his lip and - 

“No,” Will begs, exasperated as Hannibal draws away, swiping his thumb elegantly across his lower lip, and letting Will’s cock fall back against his belly. “No - that’s - that doesn’t count,” pants Will, sweat glistening bright along his brow, curls of hair stuck damp against it. “That’s not fair. You can’t - you can’t just -”

He realizes he’s stammering again, and purses his lips together in dismay, watching Hannibal narrowly.

“That’s not fair,” Will insists again, petulance in the downward turn of his mouth.

Hannibal’s smile is still just as warm, just as gentle as it had been, and he leans over Will’s prone and shaking form to kiss the frown from him, to part his lips and draw his tongue over Will’s until the other sighs, resigned and pleased, against him.

“You were on six,” Hannibal reminds him softly, pulling back with a grin. “The time is yours to take, Will, but I may get impatient.”

He draws his knuckles down Will’s cock now, and back up, lingering lightly over the head before taking his hand away and sinking down to run warm lips over Will’s thighs, close enough to anticipate, to tremble, but not close enough to actually touch again.

Will’s toes curl into the bunched sheets as he watches Hannibal’s mouth move so promisingly close to his bare skin. A human theremin, body stirring to song at even the promise of his touch near it.

“Six,” Hannibal prompts, eyes up.

Will sucks his lower lip between his teeth, torn between the purred promise of making all of this worth his while, and curiosity as to how Hannibal’s impatience might manifest - a suggestion that he knows Hannibal lays before him with distinct deliberation.

A fond smile is granted to him in return for his fluster, and he frowns again.

“Six,” Will responds, drawing the sibilant out a little longer to ensure it doesn’t stick.

The next two numbers are given in quick succession and followed by an aching hesitation as Will waits for a response. He’s bent readily to Hannibal’s hand, although it’s his mouth Will watches now, so close to release that he’s sure that even the barest touch would crack him wide open.

“Please,” murmurs Will, wary of the consonants ahead of him and painfully hard. His fingers wrap firm around the leather restraints and he arches shamelessly to pull against them, spine curved into a now-familiar form. Displaying himself, writhing with that peculiar limberness that Hannibal draws so masterfully from him, offering his own body as temptation.

Hannibal hums, against skin but far enough away from Will’s cock to be truly cruel. It translates enough, however, if Will’s shudder is anything to judge by. And it so often is. He licks one long stripe up the underside of Will’s cock and the other moans the next number seemingly with ease, vowels drawing out in delicious desperation. 

One more.

Hannibal waits, for Will to take a breath, to start, and pushes his fingers in deep at the first click of the consonant. Fingers seek, find the raised nub and press... and Will cums with a whine, hard, hot pulses against his stomach and chest as he groans in pleasure from his release.

Hannibal clicks his tongue and regards Will with a fond smile, eyes narrow in delight.

"Will," he chastises softly, stroking warm fingers down Will’s sides in a soothing gesture until his breathing steadies. 

"Getting to ten was the deal. All numbers inclusive. You did not." he draws two fingers through the mess on Will’s skin, regards them with feigned indifference. "What's to be done about that?"

He has absolutely no intention to do Will harm, or hurt. But he knows the gentle threat is enough to bring Will’s mind back to the here and now, to have his eyes slide open barely, thin slits of disappointment, arousal, amusement.

Will finally relaxes, letting loose of the leather straps and easing back into the bed with a pleasurable rumble when Hannibal’s hands run soft against his skin. A satisfied smile tweaks the corner of his mouth and he twists forward just a little, flush with affection as he tries to shift nearer to Hannibal. His release resonates through his breath as notes drawn from an instrument, Hannibal’s fingers plucking sweet at his strings.

“Ten,” Will finally whispers, incorrigibly pleased with himself, warm with the drowsy-eyed fondness he always feels in this moment as Hannibal slides over him.

Their mouths meet, smoldering slow like embers, and Will shivers as he feels Hannibal’s fingertips glide over the slickness on his stomach again. A reminder of his little act of defiance, at which Will smiles.

“I’ll do better next time.”


	2. Snow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Will's mouth is heat when he lays it soft against Hannibal's brow, to ease the sweet bruised feeling from his chest. The sharp edges are softened from his voice as he slides his hand along Hannibal’s jaw, to bring his mouth against Will’s stomach._
> 
>  
> 
> Published now because... the season finale calls for fucken fluff ok.

Will is messy.

Untidy might be a kinder word for it - perhaps disorganized if one is being especially generous - but the evidence remains strewn in increments across Hannibal’s home that Will is as far from fastidious as Hannibal is near to it.

Mugs with cold dregs of coffee left forgotten on shelves. Towels hung bunched if not simply slung over a chair or tossed across a counter. Clothes peeled off and dropped unremembered behind them.

A curious turn, Hannibal notes as he scoops up a pair of socks, for someone who so readily mirrors other people, to merge an environment to his own design rather than blending into it. Will doesn’t appear to notice the lingering look he receives, paging through a tome of DaVinci’s botanical drawings, bare toes curled into the arm of the couch across which he’s draped himself.

When Hannibal draws near enough to pick up the glass beside him, traces of whiskey amber bright from the night before, Will extends a hand without looking away from the page he’s on, catching Hannibal’s fingers in his own.

“I have to go,” Will murmurs, half-distracted and still in sleepy disarray. “Check on the dogs.” He draws a leg up, clad in Hannibal’s too-large pajama pants, and uses it to prop the book so he can turn a page, seemingly engrossed in sketches of Solanaceae.

Will hopes his feigned disinterest will bury the note of uncertainty in his voice - a cautiousness. “Do you want to come?”

Hannibal considers. It has been two days since Will had made arrangements for the dogs to be looked after, when it had become infinitely clear that he would not be allowed out of bed for longer than a few minutes at a time. He knows Will misses the comfort of the animals' snuffling sounds and clicking claws on the wooden floor. Knows the tug that pulls Will back is as much ringed with panic as it is with general homesickness. 

The question still hangs between them, though, a genuine invitation where before Hannibal had been to the Wolf Trap house only on his own. He taps his fingers just lightly against the glass and fixes his gaze on the top of Will’s head until the other shifts with the weight of it.

"Do you want me to come?" He asks, when Will finally lifts his eyes from the book, returning the control - and thus responsibility - back to Will’s hands.

Will fights back a sigh with a quick tension in his jaw, forced into a smile, a wariness of his own offer and at the idea of removing himself - let alone them both - from this particular moment in this particular place. It’s easy here, to pretend, to relinquish boundless anxieties to the caress of mouths and hands and food and drink and sleep. He tugs Hannibal gently closer, lacing fingers over his and drawing Hannibal’s palm to his mouth, to breathe against it.

“If you want to,” Will responds, lifting his eyes to observe Hannibal’s reaction, and only then noticing the dirty glass and forgotten socks held in his other hand.

He restrains a flicker of amusement, inwardly pleased and maybe a little chagrined by the sight of his put-together doctor tidying up as though it were part of his daily routine.

The seeking of comfort, the avoidance, does not go unnoticed, and Hannibal finds that it warms him a little. Will is never outwardly insecure, he has an immensely impressive hold on himself outside of this context but within it...

He curls his fingers against Will’s cheek gently and extricates his hand.

"Perhaps we can fix the window." He says, tossing the socks to land gently on Will’s stomach - far enough away to not touch the book. "If you intend to stay the night it will grow exceptionally cold without one."

He leaves for the kitchen, to rinse the glass and take up the towel to dry it as he considers Will’s reluctance to ask, again. He has seen Will open himself to the closeness, the pleasure given him. Has watched more and more as Will has sought it himself. Slow. Careful. Still exploring a new environment with new circumstances. Hannibal can understand the desire to cling to this new familiarity, tenuous as it may appear, safe in the house it started in.

Yet he cannot imagine that once the door is closed behind them, he will so easily forget the tug that draws him to the younger man so intimately. He does not anticipate the change of their location to deter him from pulling that body close, kissing gently against his neck, under his jaw, drawing that soft pliancy from him.

Perhaps a new place is best, to cement the idea for Will to understand its permanence.

He sets the glass away and returns to the main room.

Will is tugging his socks back on when Hannibal returns to him. He studies the lines of Hannibal's body rather than the particular responses of his face, notes the thoughtful ease in his limbs, and lets himself breathe a little.

"I would like you to come with me," Will says, clearly and carefully parsed as though he had practiced it while Hannibal was in the kitchen.

And it's true, when he says it. Not only the promise of seeing Hannibal undone in his own bed where the light might fall more familiar across them, but a desperate need to push back against this, whatever it is. To test it and see if it cracks, to see if this delicate accord is broken in a return to stiff restraint, still hands, and smiles soft and threatening that never meet their eyes.

Will swallows hard and smiles, faint, at what Hannibal can’t be sure, before he rises from the couch - book left behind - to find his way up the stairs and get dressed.

-

In the end, they take one car, leaving the Bentley, as Will's hands curl stiff and white-knuckled over the wheel. It’s half an hour before he sets one hand to the bottom of the wheel to hold gently, his other against his lips. Hannibal watches, relaxed in the seat despite the car being... not his own.

It's a gesture of disbelief, the hand against Will’s mouth. If he were speaking, it would render his words untrue. Though his body language speaks enough, of straight shoulders and even breathing. At ease, and anything but.

It’s like watching a puzzle being built, systematic returning of previous walls and barricades. 

Hannibal sets a hand against Will’s thigh, unsurprised when Will jerks. He draws his thumb softly over the fabric of his pants until he feels Will’s muscles relax, respond to this particular conditioning. He squeezes gently when Will's hand moves from his face to rest against the window instead.

They hear the dogs before they see them, scratching at the door and shuffling behind it, soft whines at knowing their master is home. Will looks relieved, relaxing more with this familiarity, this warmth and pleasure that had never been taken from him. His constant.

The door opens to a flurry of fur, and Hannibal smiles, standing just out of range as the dogs swarm Will, push cold noses against his face, swing their tails and jump up. Hannibal watches the relief flood Will, fill his body and relax him. He ducks his head to look as he carefully peels his gloves away, giving Will the space and moment, burying the warmth and tightness that grows in his own chest at seeing Will this way again.

Will sits back into the snow, laughing easily as the dogs - his friends, most certainly - crowd around him. He murmurs affection to each in turn, burying his face in fur and scratching ears and tending especially to the littlest of them, who he checks over with all the care of a parent too long away from a child.

Here, now, is the abandon that has taken so long for Hannibal to draw out of Will. Mindless of the cold damp seeping into the cheap fabric of his pants, mindless of the eager tongues that cool quick across his cheeks, mindless of everything but the immediate.

When the dogs start to bound exuberant through the drifts, Will finally pushes himself up to stand, dusting off the snow from his legs and watching as they play. He grins more easily now than Hannibal has ever seen before, and it's only when Will realizes that he's being observed - however passively - that it falters into a distant relation of itself. A faint smile turned towards Hannibal before Will bundles his coat tighter, and makes his way back up the porch and into the house.

Will seems to expand, entering the space, despite the chill wind that sings through the broken window, which his eyes fall on immediately. A hesitation, there, but nothing like fear in his eyes - a calm consideration before he removes his coat and drapes it over the back of a kitchen chair.

Although it's only been a few days, Will moves in his space as though he's been gone for years. He might as well have been, for the events that have happened in his absence. Unbuttoning his coat in kind, Hannibal watches the ease of movement that loosens Will's stride, draws down his shoulders. An assuredness innate to being in one's own territory, less yielding and soft than in Hannibal's home, but more comfortable in his own body, quietly confident in the strength of his limbs and mind.

"We should fix that," Will finally agrees, turning away from the window towards Hannibal. “You did a good job,” he adds, perhaps a little less sure than moments before. He can count on one hand the number of people who have been in his house in anything but a perfunctory context, of which this is certainly not one.

Hannibal inclines his head, amused at the praise but accepting of it. He unbuttons the cuffs of his shirt and carefully folds them back. Long fold, short, long fold, short, to keep the fabric from wrinkling too much, to make sure his arms remain bare for the work.

"I do not quite have the skills to install a new window, but perhaps something more sturdy than the sheet." He smiles, rueful. "Until someone can fix it for you properly."

He steps closer to Will, when the other doesn’t immediately move, does nothing more, in fact, than arch a brow at the words, and rests a hand against the side of his neck. His eyes narrow just lightly in a smile when Will leans into the gesture, and he moves his hand to cup his face, strokes his thumb under Will’s eye softly.

"Where do we start?"

Will tilts his head into the touch, catches the older man's palm beneath his lips just as before, back when he was sprawled half-bare across Hannibal's couch.

"We start by fixing the window," Will responds, eyes narrowed thoughtfully before he pulls free of Hannibal's orbit to make his way to the living room, beside his bed, and pushes his sleeves up to his elbows.

"I can put in a new window once I get one - that's not hard - but for now," he considers, chewing his thumb as he works through his options. "I've got stronger sheeting than this and some plywood in the shed. You're going to have to help me hold it so I can attach it. I'll just have to plaster over the holes once the new window goes in."

A problem to solve, something to pull Will away from himself and to whom he’s giving direction and why. Hannibal, here in his home - the window, and why it’s broken. The sharp awareness stings sudden like salt water on a scrape, raw nerves exposed, so Will makes himself busy instead, finding his way back to old paths well tread, everything at arm’s length.

Safe. Secure.

Will sets Hannibal to taking down the plastic while he makes a few trips through the knee-deep snow to drag back supplies from the shed. Hannibal can hear him laughing lightly as the dogs lope and play around him on his way back up the porch steps.

He ushers in with the wind and a few dogs behind him, commenting absently, “It’s snowing again.” A burn of color as Will remembers watching the snow fall upside down, and immediately pushes it back out of mind.

Will is quick to take charge, the same bright mind that can separate the most incoherent crime scene into a sum of tidy parts, each in its place, each understood, and then reassemble them just as readily into a story as clear and distinct as though it were spoken into his ear. He’s exacting in his expectations, almost a little demanding as he instructs Hannibal in what to hold and where, and equally quick to correct him, not sharp-tongued but accustomed to certain needs being met when his mind is fast at work and everyone else has to keep pace.

Hannibal says nothing, allows Will his space and the command of it and of Hannibal both.

The bed is across the room, now, partially barring the corridor that leads through to the stairs and bathroom, and the second deep sink and bench that serve as Will’s gutting table for when he fishes. 

A sweat breaks glistening along Will’s brow as he balances a foot on his nightstand and the other on his windowsill to seal the window shut with quick jolts of the nailgun. Each one draws a snap of anxiety, icy in his stomach, abjectly uncertain of what happens when the work is done, and Hannibal is still here. He smiles a little to himself, so formerly assured that he wouldn’t have been the one to start forming fences again, and wholly unsurprised to find himself responsible for their construction.

Walls and barricades, built fast against the cold.

Hannibal holds the plastic taut as required, watches Will keep perfect balance as he works. He remembers one of their earliest conversations, a crime scene involving families and children that had had Will open up more than he had before. He remembers the strange longing in Will’s voice for a life of fixing boat motors. The beauty of retrospect; he had hated it in his youth.

Hannibal wonders, briefly, if that life would have truly brought Will peace.

One of the dogs rests warm paws just under Hannibal’s knee, curly tail twitching and head tilted, perhaps wanting another treat or just the man's attention, and Will clicks his tongue to call him away, without so much as turning his head.

The gesture feels so intimate, so practiced, that for a while Hannibal finds himself just staring, watching the bend and pull of Will's muscles under his shirt, hands slackening on the plastic he holds for just a moment. He's again struck by the sheer humanness of Will, the sheer force and energy and life within him. Remembers the way Will had shared it with him, had opened himself up, unfurled, twisted, bent in pleasure for him, demanded more, and deeper and harder, and yes... until Will turns to him, back in this room, still balanced, sweat light on his brow, and raises an eyebrow.

"Tighter," Will repeats. "Hold the plastic tighter." Lips just barely curving into a smile. "Please."

Hannibal curls his tongue behind his teeth and obeys, amusement mixed with something darker playing behind his eyes.

Will's gaze lingers for a moment too long on the man beside him. He observes as Hannibal turns back to the plastic, pulling it snug until Will nods approval, as placid as though he were working at his desk. The acquiescence is unexpected, as is the immediacy with which Hannibal responds, and Will lets the possibilities of this passivity play.

Will motions for Hannibal to lift the plywood, and once it's secured with a few quick nails - each placed with remarkable precision - he hesitates. Will knows he's being watched - feels the fond gaze like fingers against the inside of his thighs, still freshly bruised from that morning - and a smile catches coy in the corners of his eyes.

A simmering feeling settles through the cold and something in Will releases. His curiosity is fed by a peculiar confidence in the protections assured by his home, his territory, that which he fiercely defended with a hand that throbs sore each time he puts a nail in the wall. A test to see if the bonds newly formed will hold, to pry at the cracks and see how filled they are. 

Without turning to Hannibal, in the same expectant voice used to correct his craftsmanship, Will asks over his shoulder, "Would you mind making me a drink?"

A pause, silence. Hannibal watches Will adjust something without looking at him, without seeming to understand what he had asked and of whom if not for the slight tensing of his shoulders. A moment more, and Hannibal carefully sets the edge of the plastic aside, so as not to get in the way if Will were not to need it again.

The kitchen is very small, nothing at all compared to Hannibal's concert hall of a space, but strangely not uncomfortable. As Hannibal is his space, so Will is his. Everything is within reach, logically arranged, high enough not to be disturbed by a curious canine or seven.

Hannibal finds himself seeking an apron, shaking his head in amusement when he catches himself at the thought.

From the main room comes the soft sound of Will straining for something, perhaps stretching to adjust something above his head again, where Hannibal had stood behind him, the first time, for support. Hannibal pauses, hand poised over the wooden countertop, eyes closing to allow himself into the space as Will had allowed himself into his.

He supposes those of one mind become those of one space.

Will allows himself to the ground carefully when Hannibal gets his attention, taking the cool glass gratefully, drinking without thought.

But the taste lingers, his brows furrow, and he licks his lips, glass lowered.

"Iced tea?"

"Simple." Hannibal replies, expression clear, just gently amused.

Will takes another sip - black, just like his coffee, no sugar or milk - and traces a thumb along his lip.

“Thank you,” Will responds, unable to restrain a distinct pluck of pleasure in his voice.

He sets the nailgun on the nightstand, content to leave it there, and toes off his shoes, content to leave them where they lay as well. Will takes a quiet survey of the room, no glass or stains or signs of struggle remaining, and lets his shoulder brush soft against Hannibal’s as he passes by him to push the bed back into place.

There’s an easy strength to the way Will navigates his own space, looseness in his movements, in the way he extends his hands without thinking whenever one of the dogs clicks by him. It’s not the pliant bending of submission that Hannibal’s drawn from him for the past few days, but something sleeker, bolder - a pack leader, almost fearless.

He gives the bed a final shove back into place and thinks longingly of a shower in his own bathroom and a change of clothes into his own clothes and takes another sip of tea to swallow the discomfort that flares in him, flustered that the strange comfort he’d reached doing those things in Hannibal’s house now feel so susceptible in his own home.

The largest dog snuffles at Hannibal’s hand, wet-nosed and friendly, and this Will watches with particular interest.

“Did you ever have pets?” Will asks.

Hannibal turns his hand for the dog to rest its face against his palm, tail swinging slowly, eyes up. His lips curve and he thinks over Will’s words.

"I have never seen the appeal of sharing a life with an animal." He admits, bringing a thumb up to stroke softly over the dog's muzzle, drawing a pleased sort of murmuring whine. "Giving so much of myself has never been an option."

Hannibal strokes the dog once more and gently dismisses it. He doesn’t finish his thought, though the implication is clear enough. He flexes his hand, the residual softness of the fur against his skin, and raises his eyes to Will.

"You find comfort in company, Will, regardless of how you appear to refuse it." He says softly, stepping closer, enough to run the backs of his knuckles over the buttons of Will’s shirt. "Comfort suits you."

A sigh escapes from Will before Hannibal’s fingers even make contact, and deepens when they do. Grateful that Hannibal bridged the distance between them and only passively surprised at how much the simple touch settles him. A haphazard wall broken down again as Will wraps his hand around Hannibal’s fingers, to press them to his mouth.

“I don’t like being alone,” Will murmurs, the quiet admission muffled against Hannibal’s fingertips. He knows that Hannibal knows this, but something in the context persuades the words to be spoken. “I think too much when I’m by myself. When there’s no one there to quiet it.”

He sets the glass down on a shelf, condensation gathering beneath it, to wrap both hands around Hannibal’s instead and guide Hannibal’s palm to his cheek again. It’s daylight out, filtering bright through the windows off the snow outside, and he’s in his own clothes and in his own home and Winston’s tail just hit his leg and this touch - the warm thumb that strokes against the scruff of his cheek - this touch is still the same and the relief that breaks up the floes of ice that had been gathering in Will’s stomach is profound.

Will rests his forehead against Hannibal’s shoulder, pressing possessively near to him. He watches the dogs through the window and remembers another conversation they had once about his pack, words dripping like venom.

It feels like it was years ago. It feels like he imagined it.

“I like taking care of them,” Will observes. “I can give them what they need, and they don’t ask any more of me than that.”

Hannibal watches the way that confidence leaves him, but doesn’t bring with it the helplessness that usually radiated off of Will in situations like this. In Jack's office, during conversations with Freddie Lounds... this is an openness, something willingly given. Rare. He curls his hand with Will’s where it's pressed trapped between them.

"Certain people will not ask of you more than that." He murmurs, "Very few will ask nothing at all."

Rare. Special.

Hannibal straightens his shoulders, feels Will step closer with the movement, turns his head to breathe Will in. 

"Perhaps it's why I never considered canine companions. Unused to having no demands. Complications." He smiles, humming gently, "I would be inept with animals who can read me, through the masks I occasionally use on people. I worry -"

He stops, holds his breath and words a moment, before closing his lips and turning to brush them over Will’s temple gently.

Will’s eyes close under the affection, and he allows a quiet note of surprise at the honesty - he knows Hannibal wouldn’t lie to him, not now, but it’s another thing entirely for him to open himself up like this. Will lets his hands skim slow along Hannibal’s sides, resting briefly on his hips before moving to his back, spreading wide to run slow up either side of his spine.

Rewarding his sincerity, Will touches a kiss to Hannibal’s neck, the spot just beneath his ear he found the night before that drew goosebumps down his arms.

“Tell me,” Will breathes against him, a gentle offer for Hannibal to drop his own armor, rather than challenge Will to pry through it. The temptation is there, to let his mind work free and fast, to start fitting the pieces back together again and see the sum of their parts, but he resists, focused instead on the feel of Hannibal’s pulse, steady beneath his mouth.

A sigh, and Hannibal opens his eyes to look over Will’s head at the window they had fixed, the way the plastic sits snug and taut in its makeshift frame.

“I worry that the more interesting you find me, the more you will realize there is a lot you do not want to know.” he says, a gentle admission, and enough for the moment. If Will asks, he will find it. Perhaps, for him, the worst of Hannibal is something he already knows.

He smiles at the contact, the closeness that Will seeks and offers, even here, though initially he had needed a touch to coax him here. He brings one hand up to stroke over Will’s damp hair, the sweat curling it further.

“I worry that I will grow comfortable in the company and you will start picking up after me,” he adds, gentle amusement.

A quiet laugh, tucked close against the curve of Hannibal's neck.

"Only if I get to throw your socks at you, too," Will responds, rueful.

He accepts Hannibal's admission without comment, and with the assurance that Hannibal is almost certainly correct. There's enough Will already knows that he wishes he didn't, more than that which he wishes weren't true, and for them to start dredging up the things Will doesn’t know, back to wherever this all started - 

Will stops himself, feeling the first sharp stabs of curiosity, the click of the pendulum, and lets the gentle hand in his hair sooth it still.

It's funny how well it works.

He draws away again, but not to enforce a distance - expectant, in fact, that Hannibal will pursue. Unbuttoning the shirt he arrived in at Hannibal’s house days before, Will lets it fall to the floor, and peels off his undershirt to drop beside it, finding his way to the closet to seek out clean clothes.

There’s a deliberateness to this disorder, as Will pushes the old shirts into the bottom of his closet with his toes. A place where things can lay just as he left them, with no more meaning than that he left them there. Where nothing has to be analyzed, catalogued, and organized - not evidence to be cleared away, but little signs of life left in his wake.

"I could bring the dogs over," Will suggests, teasing. "Once there's enough fur on your things you won't have any choice but to grow comfortable with it."

Hannibal makes a sound of almost anguished discontent and steps close to pull Will back against him before he can dress.

“I enjoy having my choices.” he murmurs, parting his lips against Will’s shoulder, now familiar in shape, taste. “I enjoy knowing I can come home to my routines, or be invited here to experience yours.” Will doesn’t flinch anymore when Hannibal kisses against the scars on his shoulder, settling back into him without hesitation.

He draws his hands over Will’s stomach, feeling him suck it in on reflex, again, before sliding lower to caress the skin above the waistband. He doesn’t move to undress Will. Here, it’s his choice when and how.

“I enjoy the choice,” he pauses, lips curling in a gentle smile, “Of being told, over telling.”

Will raises a brow.

“If you’re choosing to be told, it doesn’t really count, does it?”

This doesn’t stop Will from running his hands along the back of Hannibal’s own, wrapped around his belly, and sliding them both a bit lower. He waits, pleased when Hannibal doesn’t move further, and Will guides his hands lower still, beneath his waistband. A sharp breath is pulled between Will’s teeth when Hannibal’s cold fingers graze against his length, still soft but increasingly intrigued.

“Touch me,” Will says suddenly, blushing fierce, but watching Hannibal over his shoulder with an intense curiosity.

Hannibal keeps his eyes on Will’s, doesn’t blink, doesn’t allow his expression to change at all beyond the gentle widening of the pupils.

Yes.

His hands move as directed, one stroking light fingertips over the skin to feel goosebumps under the pads from his cold hands and the touches both, the other sliding further up to carefully undo the button, draw the zipper down deliberately slow.

He says nothing, heart beating even and slow against Will where he leans back. He doesn’t do anything but what is directed - he touches. Soft over Will’s hips, the tops of his thighs; skims cool fingers over his cock, spreading to splay the tips around the head and slowly draw the skin back. He smiles, feeling Will tremble, and presses his lips behind his ear with a soft sigh.

Will's brow raises a little higher now, amused.

"I didn't tell you to kiss me."

A familiar tone, the same as when he corrected Hannibal's work on the window earlier - sharpness tempered just enough, eminently expectant - a little demanding.

How quickly he learns.

"There," he insists softly, as Hannibal's fingers graze strong over the stiffening head of his cock. "Touch me there."

Sucking his lower lip between his teeth, Will’s heart picks up quickly, and he slides his hands back around Hannibal’s neck, to bring the older man’s mouth to his shoulder. A smile, faint, as Will feels Hannibal’s lips graze his skin.

“Don’t do it,” he warns mildly, arching feline back against Hannibal’s chest, pleasure uncoiling rapidly up his spine.

A soft huff of air, and nothing more, as Hannibal keeps his lips just barely above Will’s skin, breathing him in instead, the musk of him, the sweat and warmth.

He continues to follow Will’s breathless demands, curling his palm over the head of his cock to rub there, slow deliberate circles that send Will jerking back against him until the sensation becomes bearable.

He matches Will’s inhales, two to one of his own, and sighs his name, a low note, just above his shoulder, stepping closer to press his hips against Will’s, holding him trapped between him and his hands.

A shiver snaps Will tall at the whisper of his name, tugging a gentle whimper out of him.

“Take my - take my pants off,” Will demands, firm-voiced despite the stammer. As soon as they slide free of his hips he leans back against, aligning the length of his body with Hannibal’s.

Will slides a hand up the back of Hannibal’s neck, into his hair, and tugs firm, twisting the smooth strands between his fingers. The sound it draws from Hannibal merits a pleased noise, and Will presses back into his hips, rubbing slow against Hannibal, to feel him harden.

He doesn’t give him more than a moment to enjoy it. “Go to the bed,” Will tells him. A twinge of amusement, briefly seen but deeply felt, even as his own length is left unattended. “And take your clothes off.”

Hannibal twists his wrist, just gently, just once, to draw a keen from Will before he lets him go and obeys this order too. There is something astoundingly pleasurable in watching Will this way, in control and out of it at once.

It’s thrilling.

He removes his clothes slowly, deliberately takes the time to fold his shirt and set it on the dresser, to fold his pants on top. He sets his socks into his shoes and puts them away under the bed where they won’t be in the way. A small defiance, but one he can see pulling a smile from Will despite his obvious desperation for quick obedience.

The house is cold, without the proper window by the bed, and Hannibal’s skin responds, goosebumps prominent on his arms, his back.

He steps back and lowers himself to the bed, hands on either side of his thighs, fisted, knuckles pressing the soft sheets out of shape, and waits. After a moment he tilts his head, raises his chin and regards Will carefully, eyes up to meet his before his lips bend, tilt in a smile.

This careful revelation draws a sound from Will that he doesn’t realize he makes. Hannibal bares himself not in a frantic snaring of hands between them, but with unhurried patience, and he is striking in his openness, when the armor’s removed and he allows himself to be so completely human. There are certainly things Will doesn’t know, things he’d rather not know, but Will feels a sharp awareness that even then, he knows more about Hannibal than anyone else. Scars and skin and weakness and warmth and more than the sum of all of those parts. No longer a god or a monster - merely a man as broken and as whole as himself, a man whose exquisite moments of beauty make Will's chest hurt so badly he feels as if his ribs are tearing through his skin.

Neither will ever completely be what the other expects, but for an instant, Will wonders if maybe just providing what the other needs will be enough, and the thought opens a wonderful wound.

Slowly, he approaches Hannibal and leans between his legs, knees pressing into the edge of the bed, to tuck his fingers just beneath Hannibal’s chin and tilt it gently upward.

His.

Will's mouth is heat when he lays it soft against Hannibal's brow, to ease the sweet bruised feeling from his chest. The sharp edges are softened from his voice as he slides his hand along Hannibal’s jaw, to bring his mouth against Will’s stomach.

Hannibal keeps his eyes up for as long as Will lets him, the corner of his mouth barely tilted. He feels his heart speed up, a barely noticeable flutter. It’s enough he notices. It’s enough he knows.

"Kiss me there," Will suggests, a smile playing at his lips as he speaks, brightly curious. “And take my socks off - the ones you so rudely threw at me this morning.”

He parts his lips and presses hot, open-mouthed kisses to Will’s skin, drawing the sensation out, feeling Will respond to it with soft sighs that carry his smile on them. He slides his hands over Will’s thighs, not teasing now - yet - simply following instructions. Curls his fingers just behind Will’s knee, the sensitive skin warm against his hand, and encourages Will to rest his weight on the bed as he reaches to slip the sock away, let it fall without care to the floor.

When Hannibal repeats the gentle coaxing against Will’s other leg, he bares his teeth, a gentle brush of them over the taut flesh as Will takes a breath and holds it, as Hannibal’s hand works to leave him entirely bare before drawing his arms up against Will’s sides to hold him balanced as he bends him back.

He’s a familiar weight over Hannibal, comforting and warm and so tempting… though Hannibal’s lips do not venture lower than directed, do nothing more than leave invisible marks against Will that he knows the younger man will run his fingers over in the morning, to remember.

Will grins as Hannibal curves him back so easily, the ebb and flow of their bodies already as familiar as the tides. He slides his knee higher between Hannibal's bare thighs and settles his leg firm against Hannibal's length, his pleasure at this showing in a flood of color as he feels Hannibal's body respond to this, little twitches allowed out of his control.

Further still Will pushes towards him, as the tides change. Grasping Hannibal's shoulders to push him back from the edge of the bed, Will follows and rides easily up over him, straddling a thigh and shivering lovely and flushed as his cock slides against it.

Will scratches his nails through Hannibal's hair and moves the older man's mouth against his chest, over a nipple already pert with arousal. He watches as Hannibal's lips part around it but tugs his head back instead of allowing it, grinding himself with slow strokes against Hannibal's leg.

"What do you want to do to me?" Will purrs, pulling Hannibal's hair a little firmer, to watch him curve in something like submission. An illusion, perhaps, but one that fills Will with a kind of heat he's never felt before. "Tell me," he insists, not for the first time tonight, his breath hot against Hannibal's ear.

Hannibal makes a soft sound, bends easily to Will’s manipulation of him. It’s surreal, he lets it happen, lets Will arch him vulnerable and doesn’t struggle with the man so near, baring his throat as his eyes linger on Will’s, read the desire there, the heat, the want. He lets them close, languid, at Will’s words, forces his hands slow against him, a bare caress.

“I want you aching,” he murmurs softly, “By my hands and your words. I want you to leave me as powerless as I will have you.”

A swallow clicks in his throat and he allows a smile, draws light fingernails up Will’s back to feel him shiver, arch gently into the sensation.

“I want to leave no marks,” he whispers, “But I want you to remember everything. I want to see you sated,” he grins, “Once you work for it.”

Will's mouth is savage as he takes what is offered, teeth grazing Hannibal's neck, closing hot over his Adam's apple, to feel the vibrations of Hannibal's hypnotic voice against his lips as he speaks.

He pulls Hannibal’s hair harder, to lay him back and slide higher over him. Will straddles his stomach, lithe as he wraps his thighs over him, drawing fingernails along Hannibal's cock, now flushed and full.

"I'm not the one that's going to have to work for it," Will promises, tossing his hair back out of his face with an impudence that erases years from his features. Proud, cocky even, in the coy tilt of his head. He pushes Hannibal's hands roughly off of his skin - he didn't tell him to touch yet - and smiles, faint and dark like the afternoon shadows filtering across them.

"Wet your fingers," Will instructs. A pause, another flicker of dawning confidence. "Slow. Pretend that they're me."

The rare few times Hannibal has been on his back, in any situation, his heart had remained steady. A predator’s instinct, a clarity that was both learned as much as it had perhaps always innately been there. Here, he can feel his heart thud, thick and heavy in his ears, in his throat, his chest, his stomach, where Will’s weight rests comfortable.

He blinks, just once, and brings his hand to his face, drawing the flat of one finger lightly over the bottom lip before allowing the second to tug it down, reveal a brief flash of teeth quickly withdrawn and guarded. Hannibal splays his fingers just enough, to show the way his tongue starts moving flat, wide, against the base of his fingers, and ends with just the tip playing over the rough pads.

It’s deliberate, slow, and by the time he allows his fingers past his lips he can feel the subtle trembles of arousal flutter through Will, can feel the younger man’s thighs squeezing his tighter as he watches.

Slow and slower the fingers disappear between his lips, return slick and warm before Hannibal does it again, eyes on Will’s that slowly darken to barely show blue.

It's as though he can feel Hannibal's mouth just by watching it, tongue stroking firm against his length, and Will's lips part to mirror the movement before he bites down on his lower lip, drawn into fierce arousal through sight and imagination and sympathy response alone.

But Will can't resist, and pulls Hannibal's hand free to replace it with his own. He bites down a little harder, a small sound escaping when he pushes Hannibal's lips apart. Will watches heavy-lidded as he slides his fingers deep, as far as he can, shivering at the sensation and his own fascination with Hannibal's mouth. A tangible manifestation of Hannibal's potential for kindness and cruelty, for atrocity and acts of beauty, here bent to Will's pleasure rather than savagery.

But the potential lingers and it thrills him, in a dark part of his stomach that tightens fast, pushing another soft moan past his lips. Will presses a heavy kiss, tongue swiping beside his fingers as he withdraws them, bent low over Hannibal with a hand braced alongside his head, heart over his mouth. He slides his dampened fingers back to touch himself, tracing slow circles around his own opening, still stretched enough from their morning activities that there's little resistance when he presses his fingers inside.

He gives Hannibal no instruction beyond a growling, "Don't touch" before arching brazen against the older man, rubbing along the length of his body.

Denying Hannibal his desires by design, to see him hungry.

Will moans, obscenely.

The sheets feel heavy between Hannibal’s fingers and he squeezes tighter, watches in something close to wonder as Will bends himself above him, shifts and arches and moans against him. He’s almost ethereal, exquisite. A creature Hannibal had hoped to possess for so long and now that he has him - and he has him - it’s difficult to draw a breath and feel sated.

He thinks back to his words, how Will is playing into them absolutely perfectly, fulfilling his own desires, Hannibal’s predictions…

He makes a stuttered noise of pleasure as Will bends lower, enough that if Hannibal arched his neck he would brush his nose along warm, damp skin, his lips following to taste the heart hammering behind Will’s ribs.

“Oh, Will…” worship, desire, adoration. If there was a moment, in Hannibal’s office, the basement, his bedroom, where either could have stepped back, endured considerable wounds and walked away, that moment has passed.

He feels Will press closer, enough for them to share a gasp, Hannibal’s teeth grit with the effort not to touch, to taste and hold Will to him, and feels his heart speed up to match, allows himself to let go of the iron control for this.

Curling his fingers - just as Hannibal has shown him with his own - Will whimpers, leaning low to let his breath fall across Hannibal's neck. A helpless, sweet sound, entirely deliberate.

A feast laid before him that he's forbidden to consume.

Hannibal looks up at Will with a sharpness in his eyes, taking in every gasp and shiver and twist and panted little breath to hold in his memory, maybe forever. Will feels the veneration drawing wanton at him, idolized not only for the mind that so many admire but for those parts of himself that fall by the wayside in favor of its pursuit. His body, despite its scars, his personality, despite the marks that wears, too.

Under this particular attention from this particular person, Will feels for the first time like something special.

Will lowers himself against Hannibal's chest, shoulder jutted up against his smooth chin, scruffy cheek and the side of his mouth trailing hot against Hannibal's skin as he touches himself, pushing and spreading and seeking and moaning decadently as he squirms.

Drawing out of himself excruciatingly slow, with an aching whimper, Will's fingers lower to tease just once against the head of Hannibal's cock as he reaches down to grasp his own instead. Squeezing, working in long strokes up over the head and rolling his wrist just softly before he fists his hardness again.

Will is fiercely possessive in the long, languorous kisses he drags along Hannibal's neck, licking warm along his pulse, biting against his jaw. Mine, Will's mind reels, stirred to another gasp by the thought. Mine and his, again and again.

He leans back, bracing a hand on Hannibal's thigh as he rolls his hips over Hannibal's cock - enough friction to let him feel how open he is, how stretched and ready and even a little damp, but Will rises up onto his knees as soon as he feels the first movement in response.

Will's breath stops in his stomach, twitching beneath his skin and breaking free in only little panting sounds as he strokes himself. He snares his lip between his teeth, and holds Hannibal's gaze as he finishes hot across his stomach.

Mine.

"Taste it," Will whispers, a shiver unfurling from low in his spine.

The sound Hannibal makes is animalistic, deep and low and could just as easily be pleasure as it could aggravation. His blood is humming, eyes locked on Will, hungry and dangerous. Feral.

Will’s last words, barely whispered in his need, set Hannibal’s eyes narrow. The dark thing within him uncoiling again, unrestrained and dangerously pleased. He had allowed Will freedom with his words, allowed him the power within his own space - and he had pushed and twisted, taunted him with promises and challenges. Taunting only worked for so long before the lips drew back and sharp teeth accompanied the warning growl.

He shifts, under Will’s amused and expectant stare, and obeys. Twists Will’s words against him when he bends to take the head of Will’s cock between his lips and suck it clean. He brings up his hands to hold Will in place as he squirms, so sensitive from his orgasm, and takes his time, until Will whimpers above him, shaking and flushed.

"So vulnerable when your words leave you." Hannibal purrs, sitting back enough to look up the length of Will’s body, lips drawn in a grin. He draws his hands higher, against the soft skin of Will’s thighs to spread him wider, to skirt fingertips gently over where Will is stretched.

Spent and satisfied and supple all the way down to the stretch of his toes, Will is startled by the sudden shift of power, and he shivers watching his softening length fall damp from Hannibal's lips. He shifts with discomfort and pleasure both as Hannibal touches him, squirming against the strong hands that hold him firmly in place.

"You will ache like this.” It's as much a fact as a promise, and he allows Will to consider his situation before licking his lips. 

"Tell me." He murmurs, leaning close as he dips the tips of two fingers past the quivering ring of muscle.

Will considers his options, even as he rides obligingly against Hannibal's fingers, pressing down languid against them, and loops his arms loose around Hannibal's neck.

That he will ache is a certainty, for this and for so much more.

Entirely too aware of his own physical limitations, as his release still echoes through his body, Will lets a hand run down Hannibal’s back to feel the tension there, pulled tight and ready to spring, a dark and sorely tested hunger roiling through his muscles.

He’s limber in Hannibal’s grasp, utterly relaxed in at least a physical sense, and he presses his lips soft against Hannibal’s cheek, moving in a slow line to his ear.

“I want you to leave me as powerless as you promised,” he suggests, with a distinct awareness that it’s already happened, and it’s a mere formality to offer himself as banquet to the creature now breathing hungry against his neck.

Hannibal hums, a pleased, considering sound, and doesn’t yet move to adjust Will, holding him balanced on precarious anticipation as he is. Then he sighs, a slow release of tension and impatience that caresses Will’s damp skin like a balm.

“And who would I be if I didn’t obey?” he murmurs, pulling Will back enough to look at him, raise his eyebrows in amusement and promise. He watches, the way Will rests languid, pupils blown in his pleasure, body heavy in his arms where he holds him prone and open. He’s beautiful.

Without warning, Hannibal sits higher, catches Will’s lips with his own and kisses him, a rough and harsh thing, all teeth and pressure, harsh breaths against Will’s cheek, devouring him and pulling at his breath.

He keeps Will against him, forces pleasure through the discomfort of seeking air before finally pulling back to let Will gasp.

Will lets his breath be stolen, fighting for it only when his lungs burn and gasping sharp when Hannibal allows their mouths to part, just long enough before ensnaring Will again. He twists lithe under the devotionals laid by Hannibal’s hands, trailing down from his hair to press against his back, drawing out that bend that pleases him so.

Hannibal ducks his head, just enough to see, and positions himself against Will’s hole before gripping Will’s hips with his free hand and pushing him down. It’s not cruel, but it’s deliberate, giving Will no chance for adjustment as he keeps pushing, feels Will squirm, grit his teeth and pant at the feeling. He slides his own hands down from Will’s hips to rest against his thighs, to spread them wider around himself as he lies back and takes Will with him.

This time when he kisses him it’s just as demanding, just as harsh and biting and claiming as the intent behind Will’s words had been, but his hands are gentle in his hair, caressing him, soothing him, worshipping…

Something to be savored, rather than swallowed whole.

Toes curling at the pressure rough and wide within him, Will burns fever-bright at the sensation, pain tangling itself with the lingering pleasure of his own release. He shifts onto his knees, higher, to try and alleviate the feeling, and his eyes widen just a little as he feels Hannibal’s pleasure breathed against his mouth.

A hint a smile, felt more than seen, as Will eases back down again, far from powerless after all.

The pace is almost brutally slow, a deep and lingering motion, again and again, that draws both their breaths short, their eyes barely open as they keep them on each other. Hannibal catches Will’s shoulders, holds him still when he tries to speed up the pace, forces him to take what’s given as he slowly manages to work through the energy to draw Will desperate.

Already sensitive, already tired and sated and pleased, he urges Will to get there again, pushing deliberate strokes against his prostate until he shudders, until his hands shift first gentle then harsher against Hannibal where he can reach him with how closely they’re pressed.

It’s only when Will’s panting against him, painting Hannibal’s name against his throat, that Hannibal pushes him back, shifts his hips up to sink deeper as Will rests his hands on his stomach and sits up over him. Hannibal rests his hands languid, spread, on Will’s thighs, and watches him, sees if Will would start moving on his own.

He groans, a low, utterly pleased sound, when he does. And he hushes Will gently when he curls his palm around his cock again and strokes.

“Powerless, Will,” he murmurs, voice rougher, sticking on the harder consonants, “I will have you powerless.”

Will lets his hand fall away, and pushes his fingers instead through the hair on Hannibal’s chest, drawing his fingernails lightly back down to brace warm against his stomach.

“Already am,” Will muses quietly, as much to himself as to Hannibal, before rocking forward onto his hands. 

His mouth opens just enough to allow a moan to pass, feeling Hannibal move inside of him without Hannibal needing to move at all, and he curves deeper as he pushes slowly back down. Will watches from beneath his sweat-damp hair and exhales hard before shifting his hips, to allow an easier movement, heat blooming scarlet across his skin at the sensation, and what he’s doing to create it.

Will learns fast, though, and it's not more than a few strokes before he's found his pace, riding Hannibal in long twists of his body - pulling tight and then releasing again, expanding and contracting. Biting firm against his lower lip, Will lets his head fall back, throat bared, and his eyes drift closed.

Powerless to the pleasure licking so soon at still-sharp nerves. Powerless to how readily his body responds and adapts. Powerless to the supplication between their bodies, and weakened warmly by the adoration he feels Hannibal press with warm fingers against his thighs.

Will's head rolls forward, hips twisting in a slow circle, and he moans low and breathless.

"Yours." The word falls from Will's lips without his realization, his awareness engulfed entirely in feeling Hannibal move inside him, against him, around him, everywhere.

Relinquishing power, as much his own undoing as Hannibal’s.

“Yes.” it’s a hiss, a blatant show of pleasure as Hannibal arches under Will, tilts his head back and swallows before allowing his lips to part on soft sounds and quick breaths.

This is not something he can continue for long, not like this. Not with Will’s entire being pressing against him, warm and fluttering like a heartbeat. Alive. Real.

He reaches, finds Will’s skin damp and warm against his palm, and pulls him close, opening his mouth to kiss him deep, slow, shifting his other hand to press warmly to his side as he shifts their position and presses Will’s back to the bed.

The change sends shivers through his body, the cold air licking at his skin, just as Will’s choked gasp of pleasure sends his blood humming. He leans over Will lower, one hand against the side of his face, the other hooking gently under one of Will’s knees to spread him open further.

“Come on, Will,” he whispers, eyes closed and lips slack in ecstasy as he moves his hips faster, so close already.

Will moves effortlessly with him, sliding a leg over Hannibal’s hip and wrapping his arms around his neck to pull them fast together. He nuzzles soft alongside Hannibal’s nose, kissing with none of their earlier frantic drive, but even more intense for the lack thereof. A fondness, a familiarity hard-won.

“Please,” Will speaks against his mouth, focused entirely on the man above him, breath timed in tandem as their bodies press so tightly together that Will can feel Hannibal’s heart moving fast against his own.

“Please,” he whispers again, voice hitching as Hannibal buries himself deep, his words punctuated with quiet gasps as he watches Hannibal in absolute fascination, fingers touching soft across his cheek. “I want you to - like this -”

The movement is liquid, smooth and careful and Hannibal kisses Will to swallow any more pleas that pull at him and twist something in him he’s unsure he can name. He strokes him with a deliberate rhythm, twisting his wrist at the head to draw Will taut and trembling, running just the side of his nail under the swollen head to send the sensation electric through him.

He buries his face against Will’s shoulder when he cums, the pleasure overwhelming him for a moment that all he can do is gasp and press close and hope his heart slows as Will’s does. 

He keeps his hand moving, just enough, pulling Will with him into sweaty, exhausted pliancy.

Will is surprised, shuddering suddenly at the touch that draws another quick release from him, weaker than the first but no less pleasurable. His body snaps tight against Hannibal’s own, holding still for long breathless seconds, before he begins to relax back, hiding the tremor in his fingers by pushing it through Hannibal’s hair.

He keeps Hannibal close against his shoulder, easing into a warmth like embers in his veins as he drops a hand off the side of his bed to scratch behind Winston’s ears.

Will blushes faintly at the thought of his dogs being unintentional voyeurs, though it’s hard to tell under the rosy flush still hot across his skin. His breathing slows beneath Hannibal’s weight, here in his home and in his bed, Hannibal’s hands grazing his sides, Hannibal’s nose brushing against his own before their mouths meet open and warm.

Safe. Secure.

And finding a quiet acceptance in just how powerless this makes him feel.


	3. Spaces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Will runs a hand back through his hair and draws a knee up to plant his foot on the seat. A hesitation hangs between them as he chews his lip, and pushes a bit of eggs onto the toast in a way he wouldn’t dream of in Hannibal’s home, in a way he doesn’t think twice about here._
> 
> _“I have something I want to show you,” Will finally says, without further explanation, except to add, “Sorry about the eggs.”_
> 
>  
> 
> follow-up fluff to [Chapter 2: Snow](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1675898/chapters/3571307)

The eggs are dry.

Will stares them down balefully on the pan. There's not enough to make another batch. They can’t be uncooked. So he curses once, under his breath, and dumps them onto the plate. If ‘overcooked’ is the most offensive thing to Hannibal's palate this morning, Will will still consider it a minor victory.

One hand planted on his hip, the other scratching thoughtful through the scruff on his jaw, Will surveys his best efforts at breakfast. Eggs, scrambled in the grease from thick peppery bacon, a few slices of toast. And coffee, strong and dark. That part, at least, Will does right every time.

Between the dogs offering their enthusiastic assistance with clumsy attempts to snatch whatever they can get close to, and the various bangs and taps and dings of cooking in the small house, Will assumes that Hannibal will already be awake. He’s right, of course, but pretends not to notice as he makes his way to the closet to shrug into a flannel shirt.

He considers bringing the plate to Hannibal - breakfast in bed - and snorts.

He then considers joining him again instead, back in the soft bed and familiar worn sheets. It’s finally stopped snowing, and the early morning sun makes it deceptively bright outside, but he can feel the cold through the old floorboards and there’s something very tempting about the idea of pushing his feet up against Hannibal until they’re warm again.

Will opts to return to the kitchen, snaring his coffee and banging open the screen door to grab the newspaper and let the dogs out to play, door slightly ajar for them to get back in on their own.

“I made breakfast,” he announces and drops back into a seat at the table, smoothing the pages in front of him.

Hannibal turns his head, just enough to see Will barely around the wall divider, and smiles. He’d smelled the breakfast as Will had cooked it, forced down his usual response to cringe and correct, allowed Will to do this for him.

He thinks, calmly, that he will find the food very appealing, in the end. But the urge to adjust, change, offer something else had been strong.

He hums his reply, draws a hand over his face, and considers his clothes, still folded on the dresser through his fingers. Another new development - Hannibal never wears clothes from the day before. Alas, the idea of borrowing something of Will’s brings up amusement swelling in his chest and he has to smile.

Perhaps another time.

Hannibal dresses quickly but meticulously, straightening the folded sleeves to lie careful and even on his arms, tucks his shirt into his pants.

When he gets to the kitchen, he brushes his fingers against the back of Will’s neck in a soft affection before taking a seat where the second plate rests ready for him.

“Good morning,” he murmurs. He doesn’t ask if Will slept well, and the telling silence makes his eyes crinkle in pleasure.

Will watches him from beneath his hair as he sits, a faint smile as reply before he turns back to the newspaper. He's hardly reading, each sentence requiring several passes.

"The toast," Will starts, stops, starts over again, "the bread was going a little stale." An apology, however awkward.

While certainly nowhere near Hannibal's skills, in this way as in so many, the food isn't bad. There's a quaint sort of comfort in it, something Will makes frequently when he's at home. Without looking up from the same article he’s been reading since Hannibal came into the kitchen, he breaks off a piece of bacon and palms it to one of the dogs beneath the table.

"Did you sleep okay?" Will turns the page, keeping his distance by keeping his eyes averted, unable quite yet to reconcile Hannibal’s presence here.

Hannibal watches him, directs his eyes to the largest dog that sits patient under the table to receive the bacon handed freely to him, before looking back at Will. He wonders at the tendency to close off, wonders if it’s perhaps something that will take months to break Will out of the habit of.

He supposes his presence here is still what’s so worrying to Will, that he has allowed Hannibal inside, in every sense of the word, and doesn’t know how yet to move with him sharing the space there.

“I slept well,” he admits, amused at himself when the answer is entirely genuine. It had been warm, under the heavy piles of well-used and comfortably soft blankets, with Will pressed naked and close against him, breath warming his collarbone with every soft exhale. He knows for a fact that at least one dog had joined them during the night, its heavy head against his hip, but he doesn’t bring it up - perhaps allows himself one gentle moment of denial that that, too, was oddly comforting.

“And you slept,” he points out, taking the toast despite Will’s admission about it, to have with his coffee. After a moment, he reaches out, gently draws the corner of the newspaper down so he can get Will’s attention, those wide, light eyes on him, and blinks. Soft suggestion of company without the barrier.

He lets go to give Will the freedom of choice to put the paper away himself.

Will blinks at the movement and hesitates, fingers tight against the page, before folding it closed and setting it aside. He picks up the mug of coffee instead, and nods towards the dog waiting patiently by Hannibal’s side.

“I slept,” Will acknowledges, a hint of a smile. “Very well, actually. I think they were happy to have company, too.” He drops a hand, fingers draping over a wet nose as Winston seeks out the smell of bacon from his hand, before reaching for a piece of toast.

“She hasn’t gotten any yet,” he comments, brows lifting a little above his glasses, the first time he’s managed them on in days.

Another barrier, perhaps, studious and distant. Observing Hannibal in his space, reconciling this new nearness in a place that’s for so long been only himself and his pack. Unfamiliar familiarity, not as strange as Will had expected, although he considers equally that for all they share, it might be stranger if Hannibal didn’t feel as though he settled right in.

“I want to take them out. Before we go.” He clears his throat. “You should come with me.”

Hannibal’s eyes narrow in an approximation of a smile. Will’s request is far more straightforward than they had been yesterday. A gentle suggestion of confidence.

Beside him, the dog whines softly and shifts closer, a strange wiggle of back legs as though she’d planned to stand but thought better of it. Hannibal thinks that Will’s trained them to beg politely, and it finally pulls a genuine smile from him.

He ignores Will’s apparent lack of care for hygiene and considers how he can avoid similar messes if he chooses to treat the dog for its quiet demands. He considers his utterly inappropriate clothes for the weather outside.

“I do not know the area,” he admits. “I would be happy to have a guide.”

The dog nudges Hannibal’s knee and he sighs, a controlled release of air, before turning his head to look at it.

She adjusts to rest her chin on Hannibal’s leg, dark eyes searching, until Will’s amused enough by Hannibal’s reticence that he clucks his tongue. She’s quick to her paws again, nuzzling beneath Will’s arm with a whine. He chides her gently for whining but it’s another piece of bacon gone despite his admonishment.

“I never remember to make extra,” Will sighs, watching her go. “Even if I did they’d probably get all of that, too.”

Will runs a hand back through his hair and draws a knee up to plant his foot on the seat. A hesitation hangs between them as he chews his lip, and pushes a bit of eggs onto the toast in a way he wouldn’t dream of in Hannibal’s home, in a way he doesn’t think twice about here.

“I have something I want to show you,” Will finally says, without further explanation, except to add, “sorry about the eggs.”

Hannibal watches, the mixture of comfort in his own space and the defensive body arrangement that Will cycles through is fascinating. He resists the urge to reach out and touch Will’s face gently, to watch the tension seep from him like water as he would inevitable lean into his fingers.

“Breakfast was unexpected,” he says, smiling as he gathers more eggs onto his fork, “but very welcome.”

He eats here as he eats at his own table, slowly and with deliberation. He doesn’t reach for the wine he knows will not be there, but the coffee is grounding and hot and perfect. For a moment longer, they are silent. Will content to nibble at his breakfast, occasionally indulge another dog, Hannibal allowing himself to seek out the flavors within a breakfast Will obviously has often.

It reminds him, amusingly, of the very first meal they shared, though he doubts this is quite the protein scramble the other had been.

“Show me,” he says finally, an encouragement backed up by a gentle tilt of his lips as he looks at Will.

Will’s cheeks warm unexpectedly at the smile, and he tries to hide one of his own but can’t quite manage it. He leaves the plates where they are, stretching out of the chair to find his coat and boots. He resists a smile again when Hannibal takes their plates to the kitchen before seeking out his own coat and shoes.

“Out!” Will orders, ushering all the dogs out of the house ahead of them to lock up and set off through the snow. It’s ankle-deep but for drifts that raise nearly to their knees, and the dogs plunge through these gleefully, kicking up powder into the air as they barrel into the woods.

The sun is particularly bright, reflecting off the fresh snowfall, until they get to the path that leads winding through the trees. Will spares a passing glance to an area where branches have been snapped clean, conspicuous in his brief attention to it, and continues on.

The dogs know where to go, and Will is content to follow quietly behind, gloved hands buried deep in his pockets and mouth hidden pensively behind his scarf. He scarcely has to look ahead at the path, glancing down only to avoid a root or branch.

After a time, bearing the familiar weight of Hannibal’s presence behind him, Will comments dryly, “I could be taking you out here to kill you, you know.”

Hannibal makes a sound deep in his chest, a sound that draws his lips back into a smile that suggests so much more than amusement.

“You could,” he agrees, though his tone implies his disbelief at the idea. “It is remote, and cold, no one around for many miles. You would also have a week without incident or inquiry, given the notice I gave with my clients.”

He steps up to walk side by side with Will a moment, head ducked to watch him curiously.

“You would be in quite a good position to dispose of me were you so inclined and yet,” he runs his teeth over his top lip a moment, a gentle motion, strangely hungry. “There is still the difficulty of catching me. Of holding me still for an attack, as you’ve taken away your element of surprise.”

He lets the words linger, rest between them. The jest just as heavy as the implication of seriousness in his words.

“You would not catch me, Will.”

Will's slight smile widens into a breath of laughter, pooling grey in the air. Here is a comfortable topic of conversation, intimately familiar to both. He slows his pace a little, to walk alongside Hannibal rather than trudging ahead.

"If I felt like risking a broken ankle, that would almost sound like a challenge," he responds, bemused.

One of the pack bounds back to them, stick in mouth and tail wagging, and Will wrestles the branch free to sling it further down the path ahead.

"I have dogs," Will considers. "That would help. Buster's faster than you'd think, although the best he could do is grab an ankle. Watch it - there's a big root here," he interjects, checking to make sure that Hannibal doesn't trip over it before continuing on.

"If I took you out far enough and you still got the jump on me, you'd have a hell of a time getting back," he muses. "The path breaks up where we're going. Unless you're good in the woods, it gets confusing, especially with all the snow."

He mulls over the scenario as they veer off-course, following the dogs through the trees, lightly forested here but still requiring a bit of navigation that Will finds his way through without hesitation.

"I would put up a fight," Will decides, stepping wide over a fallen log and offering a hand back to Hannibal. A flicker of tension now, something distant behind his glasses and mouth tucked behind his scarf again. "Sorry about the mud. Almost there."

Hannibal says nothing, accepts the hand to stroke his thumb lightly over Will’s knuckles before letting it go. He knows Will would put up a fight. He knows that he is the only one who would come at all close to doing Hannibal enough damage to get away.

They walk quiet a while, the dogs returning to Will with their offerings of sticks and Will tossing them far enough for the dogs to have to work for it. It’s comfortable. Strangely domestic.

Hannibal does not mention that for as easy as it would be for Will to kill him here, it would be just as easy for the opposite to happen.

Will takes them around a corner, following a copse of trees, and at the end of the bend is a river. Wide, fast-flowing, alive. Hannibal wonders if the sound of it had been masked by the heavy cover of snow. He watches as the water runs, resilient under the winter, breaking up ice to push down river, taking sticks and debris as well.

It is a beautiful place, and entirely Will’s own. The location is so remote, his home is far away from any neighbours, that it can be no one else’s. A strange tug curls against Hannibal’s heart as he wonders how many people had seen this, and how few had been _shown_ it.

“Is this your river, Will?” he asks softly.

Will's jaw works, unused to talking here - unused to anyone being here with whom to talk - and he nods, sliding his glasses off to pocket them, rubbing his eyes to let them adjust. He draws a breath that fills him entirely, and lets it ease out slow.

"As much as it's anyone's river," he finally says, but it's clear from the distance in his eyes and the calm that settles over him that it's as much a part of him as the dogs, as the scars, as the mind that works without rest except when it's here.

Will turns his feet sideways as he makes his way down the incline, as familiar as though it were the steps to his porch. Finding the log he dragged down years before, Will dusts the snow from it with gloved hands, enough room for himself and after a moment's pause, for Hannibal as well.

Hannibal has often wondered where Will’s mind takes him, when he throws up walls to shut himself away or when his eyes rolled back trembling with seizures, before he's summoned Will back with admonitions to return, to stay, to be still. As Will settles himself onto the log, arms folded across his knees and eyes only softly focused on the water, it’s clear that this is where Will goes. When he sat far away and distant in court and silent in his cell and when he loses himself in cold sweats and bourbon, it's here that he finds himself again and again.

"I come here to fish," Will says, content in the understatement by way of explanation.

Hannibal takes the place cleared for him and sits carefully, making sure his coat hangs over the back of the log so it doesn’t get crumpled and crushed. He doesn’t need to watch Will to know he’s retreated, he’s softened his eyes, his gaze, the way he breathes has slowed… Will is escaping as much here as he does when he escapes to here. It’s strangely circular.

Without a word, he reaches out to rest a palm against Will’s knee, hold it there to seep warmth through his pants until Will sighs.

“As fast flowing as your thoughts,” he concludes, content to leave Will where he is, in whatever headspace he wants to be, here. The trust offered him when Will even suggested taking him here is something that gives Hannibal pause, something that sinks deep into his chest like a stone and warms him from within.

The dogs don’t brave the water, some go to the bank to tip their noses in, quick licks for a drink, then step back, tails wagging and legs moving to set them on calm trots around the log and further into the trees. Will seems content to leave them to themselves.

“And just as dangerous.” Hannibal waits for Will to look at him before smiling, eyes crinkling and lips just tilted. The gratitude for the trust unspoken but felt.

He shakes his head a little and tucks his mouth behind his arms, bent comfortably over his knees. Will considers this a moment, brows furrowing.

"It seems that way," Will responds, "until you know it. It looks rough from a distance - the rocks on the bottom make it seem choppy - but once you're in it, it's not really dangerous at all, as long as you know how to get there."

"I suppose it could be dangerous. If you slipped." He seems unconcerned by the possibility, and after a moment, lets a hand drape over Hannibal's, following the lines of his fingers.

“It’s the only place I ever really feel quiet,” Will finally murmurs.

Hannibal’s eyes are down, watching Will’s fingers trace his own, like he’s memorizing him. He considers the words, considers the implication behind them, and gently curls his hand to capture Will’s fingers against his palm.

He accepts Will’s metaphor without filling the space after with useless words, or even agreement. Here, Will feels safe. Here he feels quiet.

Here is where he chose to bring Hannibal, to share that with him.

And Hannibal has nothing to give him back in trade. No place to show Will where he goes when he needs quiet, peace, to be alone. He goes within, as Will does, but to a place he can’t take anyone. To a large room in a large house, by a fireplace that roars in its size, by the side of a small body that tells him fairytales and asks if he believes them too.

“Thank you,” he says.

At this, Will allows a faint smile.

He doesn't tell Hannibal how he doubted, even as he heard the river in their approach, and considered turning around to return home. How he doubts even still, wondering if it was wise to allow Hannibal into this space and risk defiling it.

He doesn't tell Hannibal how badly he needs to pry at these new seams and see if they hold, and how he hopes with desperation that even if the seams tear, bringing Hannibal here might be enough to stop it all from going to tatters.

He doesn't tell Hannibal how desperate was the need to bring him despite all of that - to see him and to feel him here not as a fearsome predator at the edge of the woods but as a person, with muddy shoes and ruffled hair and his stupid suit and his warm hands and his soft voice.

Will lifts Hannibal's hand to his mouth, fingers sliding to press Hannibal's palm against his lips. A familiar gesture, now, even through their gloves.

"It's even better in the spring, when it’s warm again," Will says, after long minutes pass between them. "All these trees - it's green, everywhere. Birds singing. The sun bright on the water." He tilts his head and closes his eyes, resting his cheek against Hannibal’s hand, to let himself feel and hear rather than think about the words that fall in quiet promises that both know may never come to bear.

"I'll have to bring you back."

Hannibal curls his fingers gently over Will’s skin and leans in to kiss him before he can go on.

He doesn’t want to make broken promises to Will either.

It’s a soft thing, just a press of mouths that slowly deepens when Will sighs and parts his lips to it, but it’s not urgent, it’s not desperate or hungry as the night before had been, as they days before that.

When Hannibal leans back he rests his forehead to Will’s, lips parted on soft clouds of warm air between them, watching as it mingles with Will’s breath then vanishes.

“You will,” he murmurs, but whether it’s a gentle agreement with Will’s words, or a reassurance, he doesn’t clarify.

Will smiles soft, feeling the brush of lips against his cold-flushed cheek, and knows that he won't be able to stop himself, even when he tries.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fun fact: we wrote this like a week before the finale and were gleefully texting about all the river/stream talk and laughing about how Fuller's in our gdocs and then the rest of the episode happened and well


	4. Capture Bonding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Everyone is the same when they let the hindbrain take over. All writhe and twist and seek to keep their pathetic lives a little longer and so few manage. Hannibal reaches for Will where he’s fallen, grabs his ankle to drag him closer and shifts back fast enough to avoid a vicious kick to the face._
> 
> _The effort is appreciated._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dedicated to ghostpatches and bansheetao <3

Blood.

A throbbing, iron warmth against Hannibal’s lip that sets the corners of his mouth tilting, lips curving in something that resembles a smile but rests closer to its much harsher cousin.

He doesn’t rush, he doesn’t have to. The doors lock from the inside with a key Will has not been provided, all the windows are double glazed and similarly secured. The worst Will Graham can do is exhaust himself, a rat in a maze.

He allows his eyes to flick up at the noise upstairs, a quiet curse after a very obvious sound of a displaced item. Hannibal’s jaw tightens in irritation and he bends his bottom lip just enough to tongue the blood from it, waiting.

Guest bedroom, master bedroom… feet quick against the carpet in a way Hannibal knows Will thinks is stealthy and is quite honestly anything but. It’s endearing, a puppy stumbling around trying to find his feet. Weaponless. Will has no reason to arm himself here anymore. Not when it’s a place he knows, understands, _trusts_.

Hannibal draws a knuckle over his lip, smears the red against his skin.

He’s yet to leave a similar mark on Will. All he has to do now is follow him, pay it back in kind.

That it would come to this was an inevitability they both understood. A matter of when, rather than if.

"Broken apart piece by piece," Hannibal had assured him, softly spoken against Will's ear as he bent him over the kitchen counter, "until there's nothing left.”

Hannibal's body pressed seamlessly against Will’s back, fingers wrapped gently around Will’s jaw, the other broad hand sliding through his hair to grasp the top of his head. At this, Will simply grinned, a dark and mirthless thing, hissing through his teeth in response as his fingers tightened against cold granite.

“Do it, then.”

The wet snap of Hannibal's lip split by the back of Will’s head had been an unexpected surprise, and in the instant of shock it afforded him, Will tore himself from Hannibal's hands and disappeared into a lightless hallway, feet skidding bare across the floor.

First blood finally drawn by their own hands, a long time coming.

The thump of feet against floorboards goes quiet, a stark silence falling over the darkened house.

_A rat in a maze._

Hannibal gives it a moment, two, before bending slowly to remove his shoes, render his progress through the house soundless.

He’d considered a knife, the cool handles offering sweet memories and even sweeter promises. But he’d forgone it, reminding himself of his own advice to Will Graham, how a weapon renders a kill distant, by proxy.

And their relationship was far from that now.

An inevitable collision but… Hannibal smiles, sets his foot on the first stair and makes his way up. If there was one chase that would be worth the effort and intimacy, he would give it to Will Graham.

Upstairs is still, though there is a lingering cloying smell of that revolting aftershave Will had used to wear. Hannibal would click his tongue if the man was close enough to hear him - _I thought I taught you better_. By the bedroom door stands the evidence of Will’s earlier attempt at subtlety, the stone carving lying on its side and still gently rocking on the wooden floor. His trajectory must have taken him into the master bedroom last, if the angle is anything to go by, and Hannibal could laugh for the ease of it.

Still a fledgeling, learning, vulnerable.

The ground is slick beneath Hannibal's feet where the cologne has been deliberately knocked over, thickening the air in an attempt to blind the sense that Will knows for certain puts him at a disadvantage.

It suits Will just fine that it also serves to taunt, a desecration of that space where they’ve found each other so often.

Breath slowed as shallow as he can manage while still allowing his heart to settle, Will listens but hears nothing. His nerves are sharp, everything vivid, as adrenaline runs magma-hot through his nerves, metallic on his tongue.

Will counts the familiar distance - six steps to the master bedroom, nearer to the top of the stairs than the guest room. Hannibal would be walking more slowly now, of course, his pride bruised and ego blooming black as he surveys the swath of destruction left in Will’s wake.

He wonders if Hannibal’s lip is bleeding, and feels a searing pleasure at the thought.

If he can get downstairs to the larger rooms, the doors, the windows, even the kitchen again, he might have a chance. Get to a knife, glass, even one of those absurd antelope horns on the mantlepiece - some kind of weapon in hand.

Will swallows hard. As aware as if he were watching it unfold in front of him, he knows that Hannibal is further inside the bedroom now, a patient search to find Will amongst the disarray.

He counts off three in his head, nice and easy.

And bolts.

Through the guest bedroom door, a flurry of sound that seems far too loud in the desperate silence as his feet slam hard against the floor. He barrels back down the stairs behind Hannibal, and snares the wall to turn sharp into the living room.

The speed is unexpected, winds him enough to stumble but not fall and Will takes a moment to appraise what he has to work with, where the faint light falls from the other room and sets shadows long and disturbingly familiar. No longer the comfortable space by the fire, the couch where he’d spent sleepy early mornings reading.

There’s no glass, amber with bourbon, on the side table where he’d left it and he laughs, a helpless thing that turns into a curse. Not even something to break and use in defense.

The pause is only a fraction of a second, Will’s mind working overtime to not let the pendulum swing and - for a change - see the future of this scene, but it’s a fraction of a second long enough for Hannibal to reach him, grasp harsh against the back of Will’s neck and pull him back.

He’d come silent, and with such speed Will couldn’t even fathom it, a moment spent again in wondering if he’d lost time, if he had been standing in the main room for an hour before Hannibal had broken him from his stupor.

He twists, a terror response, and manages a step before his legs are knocked from under him and he falls, heavily and harsh, breath knocked from him with a small choke.

Everyone is the same when they let the hindbrain take over. All writhe and twist and seek to keep their pathetic lives a little longer and so few manage. Hannibal reaches for Will where he’s fallen, grabs his ankle to drag him closer and shifts back fast enough to avoid a vicious kick to the face.

The effort is appreciated.

He’d known Will would be the one that would leave him injured, would leave marks and memories that lingered and tugged at the surface. He pulls harder, knocking back another kick with his arm before grasping Will’s hair, the familiar strands damp already, hot with panic, and twisting Will prone against him. Throat bared, head back, chest to chest.

Intimate.

“That was rude, Will.”

Will swings his fist, a wild haymaker thrown off course from the agonizing bend that he's been pulled into, but hurled with as much strength as he can get behind it.

He wonders if he's moving in slow-motion as he watches Hannibal effortlessly snare his wrist. It's too fast to even be called a reaction, almost preternatural, as though Hannibal had known it was coming hours before they'd even found themselves in this position.

Hannibal shifts his fingers to grasp beneath Will's thumb instead, and Will yelps as Hannibal turns his wrist in on itself, sending electric pain from his elbow to his shoulder. Bone grinds sharp against bone, easily shattered under the slightest resistance.

Will remembers this pain - years ago, it seems now, on the floor of Hannibal's office, and how it ended then - and hisses as Hannibal's hand twists harder in his hair, tearing painfully where once he ran curled fingers in gentle comfort.

He watches the blood running fresh from Hannibal's mouth, rendered unfamiliar now in shining scarlet so dark it's nearly black.

And he spits, fierce, in Hannibal's face.

"How's that for rude,” Will snarls through an ugly grin, deliriously proud.

Hannibal’s eyes close slowly, infinitely patient, and he tilts his head, a smooth motion as though to stretch a crick from his neck.

“That was,” he sighs, top lip twitching briefly in a snarl before settling, “monumentally rude.”

He doesn’t move to hurt Will, doesn’t jerk his head back further, doesn’t twist his arm to break. He holds him still, open, expectant. When he opens his eyes again they’re darker, not the warm brown Will had grown used to seeing in the early mornings, not the saturated dark that their intimacy would bring.

These are the eyes of the person Will had imagined behind his pendulum.

Will's blood freezes in a moment that stretches as long as what remains of his life. He blinks wide through black-edged tunnel vision as a sinking cold pools icy and sharp in his stomach.

Fear grips Will, bitter metal on his tongue, and since flight is no longer an option, he bucks violently despite the threatening crack he hears from his twisted arm when he does so, kicking his feet out for leverage. He swings hard with his free hand, silent but for the harsh breaths that tear from his lungs, refusing to give the satisfaction of shouting or crying out for help, trapping the noises behind his clenched teeth.

Hannibal catches the ill-attempted strike with his elbow and lets go of Will’s arm long enough to hit the heel of his palm squarely against his solar plexus, sending Will convulsing for a moment in pain and choking for air.

Everyone’s the same.

For a moment longer he keeps Will’s hair in an iron grip before allowing him the small mercy of changing the angle so he can draw breath, eyes wide in panic until the rhythm returns to his lungs. Absently, Hannibal wipes a hand over his face, smears the mess against his thigh before leaning in to kiss Will hard, a cruel thing, sharp and biting, setting blood blooming on Will’s bottom lip to match the mark on his own, metal lingering - fire and poison together.

A snake eating its tail.

This does draw a sound, a yelp of pain as he feels his skin split so easily between Hannibal's teeth. Will shoves hard against him but Hannibal is so heavy, crushing what little air he'd drawn after the wind was knocked out of him, that a fierce struggle is the most Will can hope for.

And struggle he does.

Will's fingers snare the carpet for purchase and he kicks against the ground to try to pull himself loose. No sense or strategy now, just an increasingly desperate struggle, until he feels an opening. It's brief, a mere instant as Hannibal shifts his weight against the fight, and Will manages to pull a knee up, driving it hard into the inside of Hannibal's thigh, missing the intended mark but enough to leave a generous bruise.

A burst of hope, as Will throws his weight onto his stomach to grab the carpet and pull himself out fast from beneath.

A low sound, drawing Will briefly to another time, when that sound vibrating against his lower back sent anticipation and pleasure shooting through his blood. Those same hands reach for him now, rough and sharp, pulling him back off balance, knees settling between his own to hold him spread.

“Never learned to stay still for pleasure or pain, did you Will?” Hannibal murmurs, snagging a hand in his hair to push him against the carpet, arching his back in a pleasing familiar way.

Will jerks a foot up - hoping to get a kick off - but his thigh is held easily in place by a bruising grip before he can even get it off the ground. He tries to bend against the pressure forced into his spine but can’t separate his chest from the carpet enough to move. Pinned.

“Maybe if I’d had a decent teacher,” he growls against the carpet, blood running dark between his teeth.

For a brief moment, Hannibal smiles, and it’s utterly genuine, where Will can’t see. Delighted.

In all their time together, Will has never disappointed him, and he doesn’t now. Hannibal had never expected him to lie down and take it, to beg. He had expected Will to claw at him, dig furrows into his skin until he had no strength left to do it.

As Will squirms below him, Hannibal shifts his hand to rest against Will’s neck, fingers seeking out pressure points and applying enough strength until the younger man whines in pain, a response he can’t control, an utterly beautiful sound.

“Do you recall what I said when you asked me how I would kill you?” he asks, conversational, as he presses himself over Will’s hips to bend him more, uncomfortable and trapped. He can feel Will’s heart pounding.

Will groans, teeth gritted and eyes closed, until Hannibal releases the pressure on his neck just enough.

“Just that you would,” he spits out. Hannibal clicks his tongue and presses the tips of his fingers viciously to cut off blood supply for long enough for Will to shudder.

“I said I would honor you, Will,” he reminds him, free hand grasping Will’s thighs to spread them wider, to bend him deeper. “Eat your heart.”

A shudder rolls through Will at the words, his own a lie as easily seen through as said. Will remembers every word they shared that night. He's not sure he could forget if he tried.

That is, until his vision goes dark, the effortless cinch of his carotid quickly cutting off the blood to his brain. He gasps, raspy and breathless, and he surges with animal panic, thrashing. Sparks appear, bright as stars in the darkness, and as soon as they do Hannibal’s grip releases - just a little, just enough.

Will coughs roughly, fingers curling into the carpet.

"Like you ate Randall Tier's heart?" he breathes, razor-sharp, an accusation drawn from somewhere he can't think straight enough to find - a petty, ugly, jealous place purged from his own darkness.

Hannibal stills for a moment, enough for the hesitation to register, before he hums, a displeased sound, a disappointed one.

“Randall Tier’s heart is buried with him," he tells Will. “Unworthy and unwanted.”

His hand rests against Will’s neck, enough to keep him pinned, not enough pressure to cause him to lose consciousness. No. He needs Will entirely aware for this, he wants him here. Hannibal smiles, a soft thing, almost affectionate, knowing that Will is. That though every fibre fights to escape this, to fall to instinct, he is here, listening to every word, feeling every breath against him.

Without a word, Hannibal reaches around to palm Will through his pants, finding him almost painfully hard already, leaning down to bite hard against Will’s shoulder to still him when he writhes.

“I told you to run,” he purrs. “I told you that if I caught you there would be no mercy, Will.”

He rubs harder, drawing a helpless sound from Will before the struggle resumes, futile; Hannibal’s knees spread far enough to hold Will’s further still, open and presented, arched, like an offering. Will’s hands are useless, free as they are.

Will would be blushing torrid and hot if he weren't already flushed from struggle, embarrassed by his body's reaction, humiliated by the position and the palm rubbing firm against him.

"I don't want your mercy," Will snarls into the carpet.

He throws a hand back, fist first and missing, but then grasping, snaring Hannibal's hand pressed against his neck. Will digs his nails sharp against the scar that runs dark over Hannibal's wrist, tearing savagely at the newly healed skin.

Hannibal grunts, a sound of genuine pain for a moment before curling his hand into a fist and sharply yanking his arm against himself, jerking Will’s wrist painfully back as he dislodges him before pressing it to his lower back. He takes advantage of Will’s body still processing the shock to twist his other hand back as well, digging them against the curve of Will’s spine just above his tailbone.

He absently casts his eyes over his wrist, sees the deep marks that will bruise, but no blood.

He thinks, suddenly, absently, of cold early mornings when Will would bend this way by choice, when he would stretch his arms in front of himself to grasp at the sheets or curl into the pillow for grounding. He thinks of how white his knuckles had gotten when Hannibal had teased and teased and Will had resisted begging.

But there was always a point. Everything breaks.

Hannibal thinks that perhaps the mercy would have been not to remind Will of the same.

_I don’t want your mercy._

One hand harsh pinning Will’s wrists as he reaches around to the man’s front again, juxtaposing the cruelty with softness as Hannibal undoes the button and draws the fly.

“Stay still,” he breathes, the voice that had sent Will’s lips spreading in a smile, his body shivering in pleasure, he uses it now.

It's hard for Will to be anything but still, almost motionless but for his heaving sides, panting hard against the carpet. He flexes experimentally, tenses his shoulders to see if there's any give on his wrists - there is none - runs his tongue along his split lip, tasting the blood drying tacky across it.

Will shifts his hips, moving his weight to try to trap Hannibal's hand beneath him, but it's a fruitless effort. A shudder curls Will's hands into fists as he feels Hannibal's fingers slide beneath the waistband of his pants. His eyes narrow, another surge of muscle - any, all of them - to try to unsettle the weight from his back, a diversion of struggle as he focuses somewhere other than here.

Hannibal draws his nails just lightly over the head of Will’s cock to bring him back to the now.

“Stay still and _here_ , Will,” he chastises softly, continues stroking until Will is shaking despite himself, stoically silent in the most amusing way.

Without warning, Hannibal yanks, pulls Will’s wrists until the pain in his shoulders forces him to react, to twist and try to break free. The motion is fast enough to pull Will upright before he does himself damage, and Hannibal turns his head to bite a harsh mark against his neck, lips drawn back, no softness to soothe the press of teeth. More, and more, until Will makes a sound, and Hannibal releases.

No blood. But very close. A reminder.

“Stay with this,” he repeats.

This darkness, this thing at his back, the clawed fingers threatening to tear his arms from their moorings and snap his bones like tinder - Will knows, knows deep in the violent twisting of his stomach that it was his doing. He invited this, tempted it, lured it out of hiding and beckoned it to him.

Brought it into bed with him, this thing that now designs to break him apart piece by piece.

The shaking gasps shudder into a laugh, if such a raw and ugly sound could be called that.

"You asked me if I'd do the same for you," Will murmurs, unsteady. "If I'd eat your heart, if I got you first." His breath rises and falls hard, straining against his ribs the same way his shoulders pull against his arms. He swallows thickly.

"No," he answers. "I wouldn't. I'd fucking bury it."

The motion is so quick, so unexpected that Will does himself more damage than was perhaps intended. Stars flicker behind his eyes for a moment and he parts his lips to gasp, teeth no longer locked on the bottom one that bleeds freely and harder against the carpet where his jaws had slammed shut against it with the impact. He’s fairly sure that he scraped the skin on his brow raw with the fall, too, rattled his teeth.

And it’s enough, the stun, to hold him still as Hannibal strips him, harsh yanks against fabric until it snags tight around Will’s thighs, tearing at the seams. The sound draws Will to awareness, sets his heart into a panic, his body to feeble struggle before a harsh hand snags in his hair and yanks his head back at an angle that makes it hard to breathe.

“Don’t -”

It’s so soft, it’s barely a breath, and it’s ignored in favor of rough fingers spreading Will wider and stroking against him near-dry.

Hannibal holds Will prone, turns his head so he can look, so he can see Hannibal’s eyes slip to indifference, coldness. Nothing. A bare shell of a man where the monster bursts at the seams. Without a word, he presses two fingers in, sharp and harsh, the friction certainly painful for Will, and holds him still as he stretches him this way.

Merciless.

Will cries out despite his best efforts, quickly diminishing, and his entire body arches with a spasm to pull away from the pain, or at least lessen it. The hand in his hair simply tightens a little more and he is still, body drawn tight like a bow.

A whimper aches past his lips, blooming fresh with blood that runs down his chin and disappears into the dark carpet beneath him.

"Hannibal," Will stammers, stretching his fingers back to try to grab the man, any part of him, seeking desperately and not finding, just as Will seeks and does not find when he tries to see him.

Not transformed into someone else, but become nothing. The void incarnate.

A silent sob shakes Will and he chokes it back, gasping.

The word draws nothing from Hannibal, not a twitch or a shift, beyond pressing deeper, cruelly seeking out the spot that makes Will squirm with pleasure, forcing that on him until he’s gasping hard against the carpet.

It seems apt, really, that the first time they did this Will had intended to see Hannibal dead, had intended to be the one with his hands around his throat, pulling the life from him and breathing it in.

Hannibal turns his head and presses his teeth behind Will’s ear, another mark, another reminder.

Intimate.

Will's body is a battleground, revolting against the crushing weight in his chest by sending shivers of pleasure deep into the tight coil gathered just above his length. That too is a betrayal, painfully hard despite the agonizing sharpness he feels in the base of his spine with each remorseless press of Hannibal's fingers.

Helpless to hide the truths his body speaks - that he wanted this, asked for it, practically begged for it.

Will spits against the carpet, blood pooled from the bottom of his mouth, and grits his teeth, finally closing his eyes when another wave of forced pleasure washes over him.

"Please," Will breathes, toes curling as Hannibal twists his fingers inside him. He draws a leg up, to balance himself or find some purchase on which he can push himself away, and his foot slides back useless across the carpet as Hannibal tightens his grip on Will's hair, jerking it just a little to tilt his head back.

The fingers disappear, for a moment as though by the desperate request from bloodied lips, and Will gasps, moaning a soft sound against the floor. Above him, Hannibal shifts, draws another sharp pain through Will’s shoulders at the motion, and presses up behind him, cock sliding thick and hot against him.

Will trembles, the shaking wracking his body in a way he can’t control anymore and a panic, a mad panic arises in his chest that chokes him and sends his breathing ragged.

_What have I done?_

It’s not the pain, not the fear that overrides him but the realization that when he’s dead he can’t take the words back, the words that had sucked Hannibal’s soul from him, deadened him to everything.

“I’m sorry,” he manages, and he takes a short breath before the rest is pulled from him as Hannibal guides himself in, breathing harshly against Will’s back as he bends further over it.

Will's body draws up beneath Hannibal's weight, the last fight left in him, mouth parted just enough to breathe in stuttering, faint gasps. Splitting, tearing pain sparks hot like phosphor behind his eyes and his hands clench tight before stretching desperately again to seek Hannibal's, finding nothing.

Deserving nothing.

His shoulders convulse and a wet, choking noise snags tight in his throat as his body finally gives, broken beneath Hannibal, bent to his pleasure that even now Will doesn't feel - only cold, and pain, and the burn of his own words still ember-hot on his tongue and bitter as ash.

Will's back arches, a familiar curve that Hannibal once touched with warm fingers and fond adoration, and the only sounds Will can manage are as weak as the spasms coursing taut through him. Another apology, and another, and another, muffled against the carpet where his blood has already been spilled.

Will imagines he can feel Hannibal's fingers there on his back, the comforting spread of his hand along his spine, seeking safety in his own mind and finding it a hollow thing, barren as the black desolation in Hannibal's eyes.

Another tremor shakes Will's shoulders, and his fingers loosen limp against the carpet.

Just ragged breathing and closed eyes and the residual feeling of something slick slipping between his thighs in a languid drip.

He doesn’t notice it’s over until he’s on his back, until his spine aligns properly and he gasps another choked sob against cool fresh air, not the carpet.

Hannibal’s hands feel too hot against his face and Will crumples, curls in against himself and presses his forehead to Hannibal’s leg, the apologies back again, a shaking mantra he can’t quite swallow.

Hannibal says nothing, he lets Will gasp and shake and whimper until his voice grows still. Then he leans over, presses warm lips gently to the scrape against his forehead.

“Oh, Will, my Will…”

The words seem almost foreign, too hot in Hannibal’s normal voice after his cold impenetrable shell of earlier. Will shakes his head and the kisses continue, over his brow and down his nose, his cheeks, against his lips in a gentle brush so as not to tug the injured lip.

“Stay with me.”

Uncertainty snares Will’s shoulders into a convulsive shudder. Disoriented, lost, trying to find where exactly here is, and with whom. It burns like fever, like lights behind his eyes, like lost time.

Will can’t look at Hannibal, can’t force himself anywhere near eye contact, to search Hannibal’s face and see what may be there waiting for him. He shifts his weight to draw close, though, close against the warmth that he tried to find before and couldn’t.

Will ducks his head against Hannibal’s shoulder - mindless of the raw scrape along his brow - and presses his mouth against Hannibal’s chest, feeling his pulse, steady and patient, and his heartbeat safe and slow. His own heart thunders savage in his chest, a fearful thing, heavy and thick.

“I’m here,” Will finally whispers, his voice quaking soft against Hannibal’s skin. “With you.” He swallows thickly, unable to ease the tremor from the hand he drags along his eyes.

Hannibal hums, brings a hand up to take Will’s away from his face, to gently turn it up and press his thumb to his pulse. He takes in the shaking form, the way Will seems to be in-between being present and being entirely absent. He wonders if the pendulum stuck.

He wonders if he will ever listen to Will again when he asks this of him, when he looks at him, sleepy and smiling, all ruddy cheeks and morbid amusement, and muses ‘I want to know what it feels like when you kill me’.

He tilts Will’s head to him next, finding his pulse almost frighteningly slow, staggered, and makes Will open his eyes to see them.

Will lets himself be moved, unresistant, a distant familiarity in the way Hannibal examines his eyes, checks his pulse.

“What did it feel like?” Hannibal asks softly, directing his gaze from clinical to warm, gentle, in the space of a blink. “Will, what did you feel?”

Will's breath hitches a little, and he turns his face into Hannibal's hand.

"Alive," he whispers.

Their eyes meet for an instant, only long enough that Will can assure himself there's something there - someone - and he looks away just as quickly.

"And then - nothing," he grinds a hand into his eye again, tension plucked like a bowstring down his spine, goosebumps breaking out along bare skin. "A void."

Hannibal watches, watches as slowly, carefully, deliberately, Will succumbs to the cool shock of trauma, subspace. He wonders where Will’s exquisite mind is taking him, he wonders how deep he will fall if he leaves him like this now.

_I was curious…_

He was. He wasn’t anymore.

Hannibal sits closer, circles warm arms around Will and pulls him closer, hushes his hiss of pain when he moves Will to sit against his thighs, careful to adjust his pants to sit loose against his hips again. He draws one knee up, supporting Will’s back with it, and strokes light knuckles over Will’s spine, chasing his shivers, returning the warm familiarity back to his body.

When he kisses Will again, it’s soft, lips against the sweat on his brow, down lower to his cheekbone, sighing against the skin, tracing his nose over the smooth line of it.

He doesn’t tell Will how alive he himself had felt, with Will at his mercy. Will in a position to be killed, sacrificed, bled out and watched.

He doesn’t tell him how easy it would have been. How slow Will was when he ran from him, how clumsy his attempts to escape were.

He doesn’t tell him that his heart aches with the thought that this could have been the end of them.

Instead, Hannibal strokes soft fingers under Will’s chin, over his damaged lips and turns him, forces him to meet Hannibal’s eyes again for longer than a second, longer than a frantic heartbeat.

Will does. His brows furrow, throat works in a swallow, and he makes a sound that tears at Hannibal like claws of the dark beast within him, and he presses his lips over Will’s to kiss that sound from him.

Pain cuts sharp through their kiss, both wearing marks the other made, split lips black with blood and bruises. It doesn't stop Will from responding in kind, all the joints in his body falling loose with each gentle tug of his mouth against Hannibal's.

Piece by piece, Will uncoils. His hands unclench until he can slip his arms around Hannibal's neck, wrapped over his shoulders. His ribs mend until he can breathe again, drawing air that finally fills him. His spine unfurls and he leans, entirely without strength, into Hannibal, and - wincing sharp - draws his knees up against Hannibal's sides to rest close and let himself be held.

Each word spoken low against Will's skin is a balm - _my Will_ , Hannibal sighs into his shoulder, _my dear Will_. Reminders of who he is, to stabilize and ground, reminders of who is speaking, the thick accent and familiar tones rendered gentle with adoration.

Will's fingers spread over Hannibal's cheek, through his messy hair, splaying through the lank strands as he studies him anew, remembers the curves of his face and the warmth in the corners of his eyes. Will does this until he’s satisfied by what he sees, relief gathering hot in his eyes and scrubbed quickly away, and then tucks his face against Hannibal’s neck.

“I’m sorry,” Will murmurs, not the weak and gasping thing that fluttered broken against the floor, but lucid, painfully so. “What I did.” An aching pause, deeper than any hurt in his body. “What I said.”

Will recalls distantly a quote, out of reach beyond the hum of pulse he feels returning to himself, about staring into the void. He's unconcerned when he can't quite remember how it goes, and lifts a hand bright with carpet-burn to trace his thumb along Hannibal's swollen lip, chin still dark with blood. Snapshots of movement flickering to memory - kicking, clawing, throwing his weight against Hannibal with every ounce of fight he could dredge up. How blindingly fast Hannibal moved to bring him down, the effortless strength with which Hannibal held him in place.

And how in that dim, tenebrous part of himself, primordial and sunless, Will’s entire being had surged wanton and violent with desire when it happened.

Pale amusement in Will’s voice when he asks, "Didn't have a chance in hell, did I?"

He speaks in past tense, unaware. A potentiality purged, rather than a possible outcome.

Hannibal says nothing. The truth is clear enough without an answer.

And yet there is some tug, something under the skin, that makes him want to reassure, to convince Will and have him believe it, that such a situation would not end in his death.

He swallows gently. “You _didn’t_ ,” he agrees, soft, stroking Will’s hair absently, carding light fingers through it. “But you do.”

They sit a moment longer in the dark room, breathing, slowly learning each other again, before Hannibal shifts, just enough to get out from under Will’s familiar weight and bend to lift him. He gets no protest beyond a faintly pained sound and offers nothing in return, carrying Will through the living room and corridor, up the stairs to the main bedroom that still smells of that godawful cologne.

Will snorts against his shoulder, a strange sound almost like a sob, and Hannibal sets him on the bed, reaches out to carefully slide his pants off of him, to undo his shirt and tug his undershirt up over his head.

For once, he doesn’t fold them, just lets them drop to the floor. The mess doesn’t matter right then, with Will where he is, how he is.

In the light of the bedside lamp, warm and dimmed, Will’s bruises appear starker; scrapes and and blood smeared over his skin… yet he looks far from broken, a strange, almost pleased smile on his face as Hannibal leans in to kiss him again.

Will breaks the kiss, lets Hannibal’s mouth leave his, only when he shivers so hard it shakes him. The chill settles into tremors that run like ice water beneath his skin, cold to the touch as adrenaline runs dry and his system floods instead with endorphins, a state of mild shock that doesn't appear to alarm him. Fear and its aftermath are intimately familiar sensations to Will, a part of his existence he could no more imagine himself without than a limb.

He's surprised, though, by the taste of bourbon on his tongue - a Pavlovian response to how he normally warms himself when this harsh cold takes hold of him - and another sound peels itself out breathless, somewhere between another soft sob and a laugh.

Familiar sensations, perhaps, but the intensity reminds him of his hand trembling on the trigger before a knife ripped through his shoulder. Of actually pulling the trigger in a kitchen in Minnesota, and having it pulled on him in return. Of ending an existence with nothing more than strength and savagery and his bare hands.

“Fuck,” Will sighs shuddering, reaching for the surface and finding Hannibal’s hand, to draw it to his mouth, and feel his breath against it. He closes his eyes, absorbed in the warmth of Hannibal’s fingers curling soft around his own, mouthing soft affection against his doctor’s fingertips. “I’ll be okay,” he murmurs, in assurance to Hannibal more than himself - that sort of intimacy with fear makes one remarkably resilient, once it’s broken them on the wheel enough.

"Of that, I have no doubt," the doctor murmurs softly, expression relaxed, watching Will slowly come back to himself. There is a strange pride there, an absolute conviction that Will has walked through the fire and will never be burned by it again.

He gives Will his space a few moments longer, before shifting to set his knee to the bed, resting his weight beside Will. Then his other, to rest his weight over him. He's still dressed, clothes barely clinging from sweat and blood, but there is nothing in his eyes to mask himself, absolutely open there for Will to read him.

_See._

Hannibal leans closer, draws the tip of his nose in a gentle caress over the raw scrape on Will's temple before kissing it, tasting the metal of blood, the slightly acidic fluid the body secreted to start it healing. He lingers, lets his tongue work over the wound, lapping it clean.

Beneath him, Will trembles, parts his lips to breathe softly against him. He draws his hands to hold onto Hannibal's shirt with a loose heavy grip as a sinking feeling overtakes him, like falling. A strange affection, but one so primal and raw that it pulls a sound, sweetly soft, from Will’s very being - desperate to feel adored, and cared for, and protected, as desperate as he had been to be hunted, to fight and to survive.

They are as wolves, again, as ever - as capable of restoring each other with warm affection as they are capable of tearing each other to pieces, a shared capacity for murder and for mercy.

Will squirms just a little, warmth gathering in his stomach, and pulls at Hannibal’s shirt to tug the older man closer over him, seeking the weight of his nearness regardless of the bruises blooming bright along their bodies. He sighs as Hannibal’s nose brushes against his own and his tongue draws tenderly across the blood dried down Will’s chin, up over the cut running thick across his lip.

Will leans close in turn, to catch Hannibal’s swollen lip just lightly beneath his own mouth, sucking softly, tracing the line where it broke against his teeth. The gentle tongues turn to kisses, languid and slow, Hannibal holding himself above Will on strong arms that barely tremble with the immobility. He sighs, eyes barely open to see the younger man under him, parts his lips enough to feel Will's just brush his own.

Will has stopped shaking now, hands curled tight in Hannibal's shirt to hold him close. There's an energy between them, trembling like electricity on every breath, and Hannibal sighs, slow and long, before lowering himself to lie over Will, lips moving lower now, to the bruises against his neck.

He had felt that pulse, had felt it speed up in panic and then slow in resignation. He had felt Will's life beneath his hands and it had been so clinical. It had been explaining the stars with science. This is Will alive beneath him, the sum of so much more than his lungs and heart and blood. Beneath him Will trembles, he smiles, he arches and hisses in pain as new wounds pull and tug his skin and muscles.

_That_ is Will alive. Living. _Perfect_.

"Where did I hurt you?" he murmurs. He wants to find every mark, every graze and cut and wound and taste it. Sate himself on it so he never has to open more again. So he never has to imagine, he can know, and not allow the darkness past its seams.

Will's hands slide to frame Hannibal's face, feeling his jaw work with every kiss, laying tenderness rather than harm. He presses up against him, pulse quickening a little but not in panic, seeking contact, as much as he can grasp.

Words are still caught thick in his throat but the gentle curves and undulations of Will's body say enough, fingers snarling soft in Hannibal's hair as he guides him to a pale bruise on his neck - a pressure point over his carotid that made him see sparks. He shivers when Hannibal's lips press soft over it, and trace lower still to the bite mark already violet on his neck, its twin on his shoulder where Hannibal bit him again, to pin him down and take him.

Will’s eyes open, a horizon of pale blue in the dark, at this one in particular. His heartbeat spikes sharp but slows again when Hannibal follows his mouth with his fingers, a devotional of hands and mouth.

Will's fingers tighten in his hair a little, just enough, to move Hannibal to his elbow, arm stretching above his head to snare his fingers on the headboard. A bruise there as well, where he landed hard as Hannibal took him to the ground. A burn, hot to the touch across his chest when he was driven into the carpet. Another on his hip, with angry red nail marks to match. Bruises shadowed on his knees where Will fell beneath him.

Hannibal devours them all, slow, warm, from skin to lips and further still as though just willing them away will make them vanish. He reaches up to kiss Will's elbow gently, one hand up to cup warm around his arm to hold him softly still, and draws his lips higher to his wrist that he had twisted so cruelly.

He takes his time, makes Will feel every kiss and motion where he had felt the pain - erasure by replacement. Conditioning.

_Forgive it_ , he implores, _remember, but forgive me_.

Will's skin is slightly damp with sweat, warm to touch, trembling with every breath Hannibal bestows on him as he kisses lower, to his chest, remembering Will’s gentle, amused instructions from days before...

_Kiss me there._

He makes a soft sound that could have been Will’s name, and does.

Will watches, heavy-lidded and full of faint sounds that catch each breath, his fingers twining through Hannibal’s hair. There’s a flicker of memory in the small smile that appears, made sanctified by Hannibal’s willing submission to him, freely given and freely taken. His back bridges beneath as Hannibal sooths the violent tension that had snarled in his belly, strong hands gliding soft across his chest where his heart has finally begun to slow, warming the chill out of his skin.

Laid bare and presented before Hannibal as though in communion. A sacrifice of his own body to be consumed for the salvation of another, an offering transubstantiated into living flesh - heat and pulse and movement and sound - when Hannibal's mouth moves across his stomach.

Hannibal pays as much attention to each wound to heal as he had to make it. Lingers long on the darker bruises, on the places he had harshly drawn blood. He can feel Will come back to himself and smiles.

"A bath now, or later, I wonder," he murmurs softly, ducking his head to kiss along the curve of the V of Will’s hip, the question genuine as he waits for a reply.

“Now,” Will responds, curling his fingers beneath Hannibal’s chin. “I’m not going to be able to move again if I lay here much longer.”

Hannibal smiles, eyes warm and gentle, light with amusement. He turns his head enough to kiss Will's palm as the other has grown fond of doing with him. A motion almost too gentle for Hannibal.

"I will draw one," he responds softly, pushing himself up to get off the bed, kissing the cut on Will’s lip before he leaves.

The bath is lavish, huge and antique. The kind of bath someone like Hannibal would be expected to have; claw-footed and deep. He starts the water, seeking out something soothing to go into it that smells vaguely medicinal and minty.

When he returns he draws a hand through Will’s hair and tugs just gently, fondly, to get the man's eyes to open.

"Not yet," he asks, soft.  "Stay with me."

Will makes a noise of complaint that shifts into grudging compliance, hearing the water run. Forcing himself to sit up  and biting back a deep discomfort, he lets his feet fall to the floor and brings Hannibal’s hand to his mouth, lips soft against his fingertips before relinquishing it to stand and drag himself to the bathroom.

He’s as light-headed as he is drawn starkly pale, grasping the wall as he goes, and running a hand over the back of his neck.

“Fuck.” A milder but more sober complaint this time as Will sees himself in the mirror and for a moment, doesn’t recognize his reflection. He tongues the cut along his swollen lip, studying the swelling and the scrapes and the livid bruises, tracing his fingers over them.

Hannibal lets him, gives him the time and space as he undresses, himself, and leans to check the water. It’s just the right level of hot, the temperature Will tends to prefer for the few showers they've shared.

When he turns, finding Will closer, he kisses his shoulder and gently maneuvers him to get into the bath first.

Once Will settles - his groan low and too pained for Hannibal’s liking - the other turns the water off, gathers a warm soft cloth, and bends Will’s back to start to wash him.

“I can do it,” Will protests quietly, embarrassed by the attention, but making no move to retrieve the cloth from Hannibal. He draws his legs to his chest and grimaces at the movement, before resting his mouth against his knees. Will’s eyes start to close a little, but he opens them again, and rests his cheek against his knees instead, watching Hannibal with soft-eyed affection.

“I guess it’s good I called off this week,” he murmurs, touching his lip again, the same bad habit of picking at wounds. “How are you so fast?”

Hannibal's lips purse gently but it's contemplative, not angry.

"I had learned to be fast," he says. “When I was much younger, I was once not fast enough."

He doesn’t elaborate, but the cloth stills against Will’s skin a moment. Hannibal chews his lip before pushing himself to stand, insinuating himself behind Will and pulling the younger man against him in the water.

They rest this way, comfortable, barely lucid, before Hannibal takes up the cloth again, nuzzles Will’s hair.

"Spread your legs,” he requests.

Will hesitates, a tension snaring in reaction that he can’t quite catch in time to stop it, before he slowly relaxes against Hannibal and lets his knees drop from his chest to rest against the high sides of the tub. He presses back and loops an arm around Hannibal’s neck, fingers flexing stiff from the wrist that was bent against itself.

He touches his mouth to beneath Hannibal’s jaw, softly, again and again.

Hannibal accepts the softness but does nothing more than wash him, careful when Will squirms against him in obvious discomfort.  He washes warm over his thighs, concentrates on each leg in turn until Will is clean, languid and exhausted against him.

Then he bends Will a little further, slides him against the bottom of the tub to be able to stroke the cloth over the battered and bruised skin of his entrance.

When normally Will would blush and arch and curl his toes, the touch now draws a pain so pointed - unexpected, rendered in stark contrast against the tenderness with which it’s done - that Will twists away, a sharp jerk to pull himself loose of Hannibal’s hands. A distressed gasp is caught behind his teeth, pressed firm into his lower lip until he nearly opens the cut again. Long seconds pass before Will begins to ease back, trembling anew in the fingers pressed to Hannibal’s neck.

He doesn’t know whether to apologize or not, to twist away from the touch or hold himself there, and opts for simply remaining still, almost motionless as he tries to settle his heart again.

One strong arm wraps around Will’s middle, up to press the palm against his quick heart as though to soothe it still. Hannibal continues the meticulous cleaning, clinical and careful, before surrendering the cloth to the water and ducking his head.

"I have shown you," he murmurs, "how it would feel. I've learned how you would taste in terror, how you would sting the tongue as you died."

He takes a breath, slow but unsteady, and closes his eyes.

"Never ask that of me again, Will." _Please._

_Next time I will not stop. And I will cut half of my soul down with you._

 


	5. Tell Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal’s past is not a past he shares with anyone.
> 
> It's a past he tries to convince himself he barely remembers.

Hannibal unfastens the window - a hidden mechanism, seemingly complex - and lets it swing open, releasing the lingering stench of aftershave and the heat in the room.

Will stands bare, shivering, and watches until Hannibal passes near him again. He places a wordless kiss on Will’s cheek and Will lets the breath out that he’s been holding too long, and tugs on the red sweater they now seem to share between them, sliding aching into sleep pants. The lights in the bathroom shut off and Will draws into the bed to pull the blankets high around himself.

The bruises that press between the bed and his bones serve as illuminations, bright pinpoints of memory searing fresh, of the pain he feels even deeper than skin as Hannibal makes a perfunctory circuit of the room to pick up the toppled statue, to wipe up the lingering pool of cologne.

The room feels strangely cold, nothing to do with the open window seeping snow from the night, and Hannibal frowns. He wonders, again, why he had agreed to let Will ask this of him. Why he had agreed to do it.

_Because you were curious what would happen._

He shakes his head, returns to the bathroom to wash his hands of the vile cologne, and takes his time folding the towel back perfectly on its rail.

Will wants to stop him, wants to plead for Hannibal to come to bed and just lay next to him, put his arms over him and speak his name against the back of his neck until Will falls asleep, now and the next night and the night after that until his doctor heals everything that’s wrong with him.

He bites back the urge to say anything at all and just waits patiently, eyes wide in the dark room despite the exhausted tremors that hitch his breath.

When he returns, Will is visibly shaking in bed. Hannibal’s heart feels too thick for his chest, too heavy. He sits on the side of the bed in front of Will and strokes his hair - damp from the bath - from Will’s feverish forehead as he murmurs something in his soft, lilting language.

Will takes refuge beneath Hannibal’s hand, eyes closing as a sigh pulls itself free. Still, he trembles, survival singing electric through his limbs, no longer afraid of what once plagued his thoughts - wondering before, uncertain, and now entirely aware of how quickly he could be brought low, how easily he could be ended, as much by the same soft touch that brushes against his cheek as the fingers pressed into his throat that made him see stars.

Free of the shadow of a fearful thing, having seen it fully in the light and tasted it cold like iron on his tongue.

Will twists, body bending stiffly, to draw closer to Hannibal, to curl around him where he’s seated and listen to the unfamiliar words in a language he’s heard breathed against his skin before, but not like this.

“You’re singing,” Will says softly.

The words fade on a breath and Hannibal's jaw works briefly. Then he turns away, the corner of his mouth tilting, but brows barely drawn in a strange pain Will has not seen on him before.

"A Lithuanian lullaby," he says, returning his eyes to Will again, fingers carding through his hair before cupping his jaw and moving to stand.

Will moves faster than either of them expect and snares Hannibal’s wrist with cold fingers, desperate. Hannibal sits back down, brings his free hand to stroke Will's face.

"I'm just getting up to join you," he reassures him, and gets a frantic shaking of Will's head in reply.

"Here. Stay here."

Without a word, Hannibal sighs, gently extricates his hand from Will’s grip and pulls up the blanket to slide in in front of Will, pressed so close he can feel Will’s heart hammer.

Will searches, following unfamiliar lines carved deep with shadow in Hannibal's face, eyes bright with awareness that he tries to temper by pressing his forehead against Hannibal's. Their noses brush and Will swallows down a frantic feeling in his chest as something new passes between them, something small - so small as to be missed by anyone else. Something he's been looking for, so close now but like a little bird that could take flight again if he comes too near it.

He runs a hand over Hannibal's hair, and draws the length of his body alongside him to lay pressed fast together. Safe. Secure. His breath is warm against Hannibal's cheek when he speaks, a quiet curiosity.

"You grew up there," Will murmurs, a gentle coaxing he knows he can't hide from Hannibal and so he doesn't try, doesn't pretend like he can't be read as easily as he can read, and doesn't pretend that it's anyone's choice but Hannibal's to speak more.

But he hopes, in the closeness of his heart and in the curl of his fingers in Hannibal’s hair, he hopes.

Hannibal closes his eyes, breathes slowly and evenly until he feels Will start to mirror, feel his heart start to slow from it's frantic beat. He knows Will wants an answer, has avoided him easily before, adjusting the conversation to flow to have Will answer, make him forget.

Hannibal’s past is not a past he shares with anyone.

It's a past he tries to convince himself he barely remembers.

"A long time ago it was my home,” he allows at length, gives Will his victory. Just today. Just to feel Will relax with the answer, as though it had granted him something almost divine.

_Trust._

"Be _careful_ , Will," he urges, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper for a moment. "You cannot unknow something once you seek and find it. Please."

Will tenses just a little, defenses frayed against all the things that live in him, all the death he carries. His wounds inside and out burn harsh at the memories that tear at him, but for all of their whispers and their grasping fingers, Will finds it hard to imagine something here, now, worse than what he saw earlier that night.

A person unbecoming, as their humanity unravelled.

Will swallows again and relaxes his fingers, letting them fall soft over Hannibal's jaw, pressure in his fingertips to work away the tightness that flexes there. Diverting his attention from everything already inside himself to allow room for this, too.

Hannibal. _Mine_.

"I want to know," Will assures him gently. "I want to see."

“Tell me.” Will runs his nose softly alongside Hannibal’s and breathes his words in tenderness against his skin. “Tell me what it was like. When it was your home.”

Hannibal opens his eyes, so close to Will that the blue that meets his is compounded into one orb, not two. He turns his face just a little, to feel Will caress him, and considers.

He could tell him of the war. Of the poverty and cold. He could tell him of small shacks and sleepless nights and the lullaby and why he knows it.

"In fall, you could smell the ozone before and after a storm," he says instead, letting his eyes fall closed again. "It would be cold enough, some days, that the puddles would freeze but you would not yet see your breath."

He counts the beats of his heart to ten.

"My family's home was large, we were very lucky. It offered enough space for a silly boy and his imagination."

Will's eyes close, though the pace of his heart is still quickened as he absorbs the words, tries to see them behind his eyelids. He sighs heat against Hannibal's neck and he tucks his head against him, trying to imagine Hannibal Lecter as anything but the man, the god, the monster he knows now.

It's getting harder and harder to even see him as those things, rather than simply _his_.

But Will finds him, a painfully clever child, comfortable and protected. Small but with boundless energy, before he became tall and strong and fierce and beautiful. Dark eyes flashing wide and curious, before they shuttered into narrow calculations. Will curls his fingers along Hannibal's cheek.

"What did you imagine?" he asks, a gentle amusement, but there’s a pause, here, some movement of air or pulse in resistance. He doesn't push back against it, merely lets it breathe, and trails a touch down Hannibal's jaw, to let his hand fall soft against his chest, to feel his heartbeat patient and slow.

"Everything I could." Hannibal smiles, letting his eyes open a little more,  just enough to see the top of Will's head where he's curled against him.

"The heroes in my books. The lands I hadn't seen and never thought I would." He brings a hand up to stroke Will's hair, feeling the trembles subside from him to intermittent things as he takes warmth from Hannibal,  allows his body to rest.

"I would adjust tales. Make them up anew," he sighs, swallowing, the sound clicking in his throat. "I would spare Mischa any deaths in my tales."

He says her name like a hymn, sacred and solemn, and Will's breath hitches at the beauty of it, at Hannibal allowing it to be spoken between them, a gentle anguish as real as the feel of their bodies pressed close together.

The give and take of their conversations falls away, no quid pro quo, no exchange of blows. This is an offering, absolute, of something stored beyond the foyers and the hallways of the place that Hannibal has built for himself inside, secreted far away and defended desperately, kept safe from anyone and anything that would come near.

Treading soft here, careful in this place that exists so tenuously between them, Will breathes the name with reverence, though he knows not why, not yet.

"Mischa," Will whispers to him, a question, and presses his fingertips against Hannibal’s chest, as though to sooth away how Hannibal's heart skips.

"My sister," Hannibal says, eyes distant, even when Will pulls back enough to see him. "She died."

The silence following the words seems hollow, as though all air is missing, like a vacuum between them.  He watches the middle distance, eyes out of focus, brighter. After a moment, Hannibal’s eyes shift to Will’s and he smiles, a very soft, very gentle thing.

"She had a much stronger gift for telling stories," he says. “Characters came to life with her words. With mine, they simply had a voice."

Will watches him from close, and runs a finger beneath Hannibal’s hair to smooth it back from his face. He returns the faint smile, a mirror of Hannibal's own, and resists an apology that even genuine in its condolence would feel out of place and distant in this new nearness.

But there’s a movement Will can feel behind his eyes, steady swings that beg his attention to start fitting the pieces together, the vague answers and the misdirections, and he fights it hard, fights to stop its swing and just let Hannibal guide him.

_I was once not fast enough._

He lets his hand come to rest against Hannibal’s neck, thumb stroking his jaw, palm pressed warm against his pulse.

“You sang to her.”

"Often," comes the quiet confirmation, Hannibal's eyes distant again.

He's back in the winter, holding his sister tight to him, feeling her shake with fever as her coughing grows weaker. He thinks of the song, the gentle ebb and flow of words that had grown rough with repetition in his dry throat.

Hannibal swallows.

"It was an unfortunate winter. The war made people desperate. Others helpless against such desperation."

He ducks his head and kisses Will softly on the cheek.

An overpowering desire to shed a light on this place takes hold of Will, a need to air out this room hidden so deeply in Hannibal and let it breathe. Let him breathe. To let him move in this place illuminated and open and without the darkness that gathers in the corners and to let him move in this place not alone.

"She was killed," Will asks, to make clear, in as gentle a tone as Hannibal has ever heard from him, brows drawn. His hand is a guide, soft and steady and familiar and warm, against Hannibal's chest, his own pains psychic and physical forgotten entirely as he absorbs himself in the lines of Hannibal's face, the distance in his eyes.

Will restrains a tremor in his breath at the feeling, throat clicking softly.

"She was killed." A strange note in the tone, a distancing that gives Will only more questions.

"An innocent victim where it could have been me," Hannibal adds, eyes narrowing just gently, just enough. "Where I had asked them for it to be me."

There's a silence, heavy and thick and Hannibal sighs, bringing a hand up to press against the bridge of his nose. When he pulls his hand away his expression is just tired.

"Stop," he asks gently. "Don't let it swing. This happened a long time ago."

A hesitation, tangible between them, as Will readies to grasp the next drape and pull it open, reveal another dark corner, rip the curtains down all around and know everything. The same fierce need he felt against his skin earlier in the night, the same hunger to control and to see and to taste and to _know_.

But slowly, in silence but for the wind blowing cold through the open window, the tension loosens. He relaxes his fingers against Hannibal's chest, releases his control, and runs his palm in soothing, slow strokes against his skin.

It's enough.

Will leans in close, to let their mouths meet softly, bruised by each other, made tender with the opening of wounds.

"Thank you," Will murmurs, and draws close to staunch the blood between them.

 


	6. Harmony

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Will sets his hands in place against the keys, Hannibal arches against him, a deliberate roll of his hips against Will’s as his hands hold him steadily open. Distracting, tempting.
> 
> A pending reward for a job well done, if it’s done well.

Hannibal finds Will by the large glass doors of the sitting room, wine glass in hand, watching the snow. It’s early, far too early for either of them to be awake, even on their schedules, but Will looks neither disturbed nor upset. He simply is, just taking his place in Hannibal’s space where day by day he is more needed and wanted.

Will still stiffens, just a little, from the surprise of Hannibal’s silent approach, but he relaxes quickly, brings the glass to his lips and licks them after.

“It’s a different sort of quiet, here,” Will says gently, voice just low enough to be above a whisper. “Not the empty silence of Wolf Trap.”

Hannibal just rests his chin against Will’s shoulder and breathes. After a while, allows his eyes to close, turning his head to sigh against Will’s skin, to breathe in the scent that has become so ingrained in his mind that he feels lost without it.

“It helps when I compose,” he says.

Will could roll his eyes but resists the urge, channeling it into a faint smile instead as he tilts his head to allow Hannibal closer to his neck.

"Not only do you work, two jobs essentially, but you also cook," Will begins, lightly, "and you draw. You write, at least academically. You have," a pointed pause here, rueful as he takes another sip, "other pursuits."

"I would say that you should garden, but I imagine you already do," Will continues, motioning with the wine glass to the snow-covered space outside. "More than the herbs in the dining room, I mean. Vegetables. Fruit. Little ones, berries. Tomatoes. Grapes, maybe, but you can't get as many as you need because of the light in late summer - you lose it during the afternoon.”

He swirls the wine and continues peaceably. "Risky to grow out there considering the residue in Baltimore dirt, but," Will pauses, clucks his tongue once against the back of his teeth in thought, "but even if it’s safe, you wouldn't want trace metals to influence the food, so you bring in clean soil anyway."

"Oh, and you play music, too. And compose. Apparently." Will is quiet for a moment following the waterfall of words and draws the back of his hand, still holding the glass, along his own ruddy cheek. "I had coffee before this," he finally says, chagrined.

He reaches back to snare one of Hannibal's hands, wrapping it securely around himself.

"Most days I consider it an achievement if I can manage to make myself put on a jacket before lecture."

"That is an achievement," Hannibal murmurs, smiling. "I don’t lecture."

It's a gentle jest, enough to make Will smile, to feel it against the muscles in his neck as they shift for the expression. For a while, he says nothing more, allowing himself to let the words sink in, the full meaning and depth of them. To understand just how well Will knows him, now, beyond a pendulum swing, beyond an unwanted psychoanalysis.

"You save lives, Will, " he says gently, at length. “There is no greater achievement than that."

He kisses behind Will’s ear, affectionate and soft, and reaches to take the glass from his hand and take a sip himself.

"But I could always teach you to compose, if you feel that would help your achievements."

Will snorts, amused. “You’d have to teach me how to play first. The dogs touch the piano more than I do.”

He turns towards Hannibal and only just resists a smile when the older man’s lips graze his cheek, before Will steals back the glass of wine and makes his way to the harpsichord. There’s a lingering slowness in Will’s movements, marks of their struggle still healing across his brow and mouth. But despite the darkening bruises strung across his skin, starkly visible above the sleep pants he stole from Hannibal’s drawer again, the physical reminders of their mutual violence are easing.

As they always have. As they almost always will.

The wine helps, and Will takes another sip as he settles stiffly down on the bench, bare feet tucked away from the cold floor where he sets the glass. Experimentally, Will presses down on a key and is briefly surprised when it doesn’t make a sound until he lifts his finger again.

“It plucks,” Will notes, pleased by this simple revelation.

"It does," Hannibal smiles, inexplicably pleased that the glass hadn’t gone on the harpsichord. "It requires a light hand to play it. Patience."

He moves to sit behind Will carefully, knowing the instrument intimately in the dark.

Both instruments.

"It is a temperamental instrument. Playing it is a compromise between the two of you."

Hannibal smiles, sliding his hands lightly over Will's, palms over the backs of his hands, fingers curling together.

"It is very much like a person."

For the second time that morning, Will barely restrains himself from rolling his eyes, amused affection warming him as he settles back against Hannibal’s chest.

“It’s an unusual instrument to be drawn to,” Will observes. “I’d imagine most people don’t give it much consideration.”

He stretches his hands beneath Hannibal’s, spreading over the keys, and plucks a few random notes.

“A bit atonal. Almost off-key, unless you’ve taken the time to know how it needs to be played,” Will considers. “When did you learn?” A glance over his shoulder to Hannibal, content to let him muse poetic over the strange device, and equally content to simply feel their hands and bodies pressed comfortably together.

"When I was very young," comes the unhelpful reply, amusement curling the words. "It was a way to communicate without resorting to words, when words did not come to me easily."

Hannibal gently sets Will’s hands to the keys,  splays his fingers, and presses just the tips down with his own.

"There is sometimes comfort in atonality. And an instrument is something you can control entirely." He presses Will’s fingers down before releasing the keys, a strangely melodic discord filling the space they share.

"Change one tone to another. Adjust the speed you play, how long the sound carries." Soft words murmured against Will’s skin as he shifts their hands again, fingers flexing together before aligning them on the keys once more.

"You can create harmony from disorder."

Will considers this, as he considers the taste of wine on his mouth when he draws his lower lip thoughtfully between his teeth.

He relaxes his hands beneath Hannibal’s guidance, except to press his fingertips softly and draw them away again. An uplifting sound, bright and sweet, but as Will goes to make it again, he slides a finger from beneath Hannibal’s own to find another key instead. Dissonance.

“Or the inverse,” Will suggests. “How much of each depends on the composition, how all the pieces fit together. Or the intention of the composer - what affect they want to create.”

He settles back a little more, lets his weight lean fully against his doctor, and observes their hands as Hannibal guides them to a new chord. “Do you seek out the harmonious and break it apart? Or do you find the melodies inherent in discord?”

Hannibal considers the words, the deeper meaning behind them, and starts their hands in a slow melody against the keys, something that, to Will’s amusement, begins to shape into Moonlight Sonata.

"It is certainly dependent on the reason I'm composing,” he says carefully.

"On occasion I find myself seeking to break harmony apart.” Their hands move a little faster, something Will thinks might be Stravinsky. Hannibal keeps their hands moving until they return to the soft melody of before.

"Other times, I seek melodies in presented discord. Soothe them, allow them a space to breathe, put themselves together."

Hannibal rests his head on Will’s shoulder again, a gentle lean, turned to press his cheek to Will’s neck.

"Cracks in a teacup can be repaired, though the scars will always remain upon its surface. With music, the scars become the basis for renewal. No longer scars but lifelines."

“Creation by way of destruction.” Another missed note as Will tries to keep up, and he smiles, briefly amused, before resting his cheek against Hannibal. “There’s a place for dissonance, then. Emphasize the wholeness of the harmonies. Draw attention to the patterns in the teacup by disrupting them.”

Will slides his hands out from beneath Hannibal’s to let them lay on top instead, to feel the way his fingers move across the keys when no longer slowed by Will’s own clumsy attempts. Effortless, now, confidence in where each key can be found and how to fit them together to create melodies out of memory, and a peculiar gentleness in how each note is drawn out of the instrument.

“To shape it all into something greater than what was first apparent.” Will curls his fingers against the back of Hannibal’s hand, wrapping softly around his wrists to trace the scars there. Slowly he stretches to drape his arms back over Hannibal’s shoulders, arching enough that he can splay his palms over Hannibal’s back and feel the muscles move there as well.

“I must be very lucky,” Will says, tilting to press his lips beneath Hannibal’s jaw, “to learn from such a legendary artist.”

Hannibal hums, the smile spreading itself warm and obvious under his tone.

“You are my first student in music as well,” he says softly, “so it will be you who tells me if you are lucky.”

He tilts his head for Will to move his lips lower, allows his eyes to close and plays. The melodies shift and change under his hands, from pieces Will knows to those that he assumes Hannibal had himself composed. The changes are seamless, flowing into and out of each other like water.

Outside, the snow lays still and thick, smooth in the early dawn, a strangely reassuring blanket of silence keeping the sound of Hannibal’s playing within the walls of his house. It’s as though they are the only people in the world, right then.

“But,” Hannibal hums, when Will’s teeth graze lightly against his skin, “if you are to be a student, Will, you must learn as well as appreciate.”

Will makes a faintly dismayed noise against Hannibal's neck, fingers spreading up through the back of his hair before he withdraws them, feeling Hannibal unmoved, although entertained, by his maneuvers. He draws his arms back from around Hannibal's shoulders and sits up straighter, stretching his neck in an attempt to correct his posture that lasts for only a few moments before he slouches comfortably again.

He sets his fingers on the keys, snug beneath Hannibal's own, and glances back over his shoulder, studying the satisfied curve of Hannibal’s mouth.

"Better?"

Hannibal’s thighs press closer around Will where he sits, and he stills the music for a moment to guide Will’s hands against the keys again. When he shifts to sit closer, to press Will’s back flush against his chest, he can feel Will’s body tremble with a gentle anticipation. Hannibal slides one hand up Will’s chest, palm slightly cooler than the skin there, and tucks his thumb under Will’s chin to lift it until his shoulders straighten into a better posture.

Then he splays his hand softly against Will’s throat and kisses behind his ear.

“Better,” he says, smiling. “Stay still.”

His other hand he slides down to rest against the inside of Will’s thigh, the skin hot through the thin silk of the pants he wears. _Mine_ , Hannibal thinks, amused, as his fingers gently encourage Will’s legs to spread just a little more. Then he sets one hand to the keys and deliberately works over a scale, right near Will’s hand, the intent for him to imitate obvious.

Will licks his lower lip between his teeth and tilts his head in concentration. With a quick sigh, he sets his hand to the keys and mimics the scale upward - slowly, but without error - and follows it back down again. He repeats this several times, genuine focus in the steadiness of his breaths pressed back against Hannibal's chest, charmed by the pluck of strings in the silent house.

A flush of pleasure reddens Will's cheeks when he stops. He sits a little taller, adjusting his position to slide back a little on the bench until his hips are flush with Hannibal's, the lines of their bodies parallel against the other.

"I'm a fast learner," he reminds Hannibal, chin lifting with an imperious quirk of a smile. A little demanding, eminently expectant. "Show me something harder than that."

Hannibal laughs, the sound more felt than heard against Will’s back, and drops both hands to rest against Will’s thighs now, sliding smooth from knee to groin in a deliberate line.

“Again,” he says. “Other hand. Lower scale.”

As Will sets his hands in place against the keys, Hannibal arches against him, a deliberate roll of his hips against Will’s as his hands hold him steadily open. Distracting, tempting.

A pending reward for a job well done, if it’s done well.

His fingers twitch in surprise, and Will finds himself glad that harpsichords pluck, rather than hammer, a thought he’s most certainly never had before. He steadies himself with a held breath as he begins.

A missed note, quickly corrected, before he settles into working his way slowly along the scale. Feigning a disinterest in the hands on his thighs that cause them to spread a little wider, he rocks his hips back against Hannibal - just a little, just enough - every few notes.

Satisfied after a few scales, Will stretches his neck, down through his back, shifting his hips in a subtle, almost thoughtless circle. Almost thoughtless, but betrayed by the smile that catches one corner of his mouth, terribly pleased with himself.

“Harder.”

A possessive growl, just barely below dangerous, brings Hannibal’s lips to Will’s ear.

“Both,” he whispers, teeth grazing the earlobe before he tugs it sharply, enough to feel Will twitch. “No mistakes.”

He allows the shudder, the sigh, the way Will adjusts his position before raising both hands to the instrument and beginning to play, each scale slow but timed together, the sounds in harmony. Hannibal’s eyes close, seeking out the pattern within the deliberate rhythm, allowing himself to absorb the heart beating against him just barely faster than his own, the warmth that seeps through his skin to his bones, from the man in front of him.

“Again,” he says, without opening his eyes, without moving at all, once Will’s fingers have picked up speed enough to sound almost practiced.

When he starts, Hannibal draws his knuckles over the front of Will’s pants, the bulge there evident and obvious, hardening even as he strokes it with such gentle deliberation. When he curls his hand around Will to stroke him slowly, he’s rewarded with a soft moan, another shudder, the beautiful warmth of the red in Will’s cheeks… and no mistakes.

Will can’t sit still, defiant as ever of this particular instruction, and presses into Hannibal’s hand sliding in smooth tugs beneath his pants. A soft breath, the older man’s name caught on his lips, as he plays as instructed, his posture going pliant despite his attempts to maintain it.

Slowly, the scales begin to fall away, a discord of rhythm deliberately broken into new pieces, picked out unsteadily at first. His fingers fall heavier against the keys with the memory of movement practiced on other instruments, this one still a new experience to him even if the melodies themselves are not. Something he taught himself again out of curiosity when he first found the piano in his house, having learned it long ago in one of countless schools whose name he no longer recalls.

Hannibal’s hand pauses when the tune filters through the heavy keys and discord and he grins, wide and pleased before turning to kiss Will’s neck as he continues to stroke again, listening to Will’s body as much as he is to the piece played.

Hannibal recognizes the piece as it draws itself out of dissonance, one of Chopin's simpler nocturnes, as Will finds his way through the familiar unfamiliarity of playing it here, with him. A little breathless as his pulse picks up tempo alongside the movement of his fingers over the keys, Will lets the practice of this particular piece see itself through his missteps, refusing to correct them as instructed and simply letting it play.

“Better?” Will manages, brimming with amusement only tempered by concentration.

He allows the errors, allows the stuttering and slowing of the pace when Will’s voice breaks forth again, on a quietly wanton noise that sends Hannibal’s spine straight with a pleased shiver.

 _Perfect._ In this moment, Will is utterly perfect.

And the moments get more and more frequent.

As the piece comes to a trembling end, Hannibal slides his hands under Will’s hips and hoists him up, enough to stand, one hand sliding up his back to bend him over the instrument they sit at, the other sliding the soft sleep pants from around Will’s hips.

When he leans in, he feels Will tense, hears the curse that is spread warm with a smile. Without a word, he spreads Will’s cheeks with his thumbs and tongues against him.

Will exhales a sigh of laughter before a moan catches his breath instead. He leans low over the instrument, careful not to put his weight anywhere that looks like it has moving parts, arms spread to balance himself, to allow himself to bend further, to feel Hannibal's mouth open hot against him.

Another curse groaned soft into the harpsichord when Hannibal's mouth closes again to draw a slow kiss against Will’s opening, toes curling until he lifts a foot off the ground, body coiling in pleasure.

Breathless, panting, Will arches his spine to drive his hips back hard with need. He curls his fingers along the expensive wood of the instrument to resist curling them around own length, flushed and full, focused entirely on the pleasure that Hannibal's tongue and lips and mouth and breath draws from him. Little gasps, soft and sweet and aching with each flick of tongue, deeper moans each time his tongue presses into him.

A temperamental instrument, played expertly.

Hannibal holds him still, fingers curled over the smooth skin avoiding the bruises stark dark against him. He takes his time. Allows Will to unfurl entirely, to push back and beg with every inch of his body and every gasp drawn from his lungs.

Will turns his head, mouth slack, and watches Hannibal's hands slide over him, watches his head duck low again, and groans soft as he feels another swipe of tongue against his sensitive skin. He can feel the bruises tugging at him enough to know that Hannibal is carefully avoiding them, and feels a sudden warmth at this, beyond the physical pleasure that chokes off his words with a gasp.

He lets his eyes close, humming, pleased, against Will as the other arches his back deeper, presses his chest to the flat, cool wood of the instrument.

A reward well deserved.

Yet, the curiosity sits heavy on Hannibal’s shoulders, slows the deliberate laps of his tongue until Will is shaking and pushing back in desperate need and want for more.

“Beautiful, talented boy. When did you learn?” Hannibal asks, breathing the words against damp skin, pressing his teeth just gently to the soft curl of muscle at the very top of Will’s thighs.

He resumes his gentle ministrations as Will’s lips part to speak, enjoys the stuttering and whimpering filling the spaces between his words.

"When," Will begins, stammering. His voice is weak, trembling soft and words fluttering fast, "when I was very young."

A quick grin at this, crooked-sweet and overtly pleased with himself. Will bends lower still, fingers curling around the underside of the instrument, pressed into the wood beneath the keys.

Hannibal hums, understanding, and allows just the tip of his tongue to push into Will, another reward for the truth. He thinks, briefly, of a much younger Will, glasses balanced on his nose, hair soft and messy in curls around his head, sitting and diligently plucking away at scales on a piano his fingers could barely reach.

The Will in front of him now moans, and Hannibal pushes his tongue in further, feeling the trembling that runs through Will’s form, the way his moan stutters to lilting, to weak soft little noises.

“Please…”

Hannibal pulls back, brings a hand down to stroke very softly over Will’s cock, tip to root, a gentle warning.

“Don’t,” he requests, smiling as he issues his next command.

“Stay still.”

Will whimpers in protest, grasping harder against the harpsichord to quell the involuntary shudder that rolls from his hips up through his spine at the gentle order. He tries, oh he tries, but Will can't help but move, twitches of his thighs as he presses into Hannibal's hand, clenching stomach tight with pleasure, lip caught between his teeth again.

"Harder," he sighs, sweet and eager, toes curling until he's balanced precariously on them, visibly resisting drawing his leg up again. A quick learner, perhaps, but one who struggles with this particular lesson.

Hannibal savors everything, every twitch and shudder and disobedience. He allows it, feels Will work to push back, to make his own words come true.

With a pleased smirk, eyes narrowed in amusement, Hannibal pulls back and slides his hands down Will’s legs until he can slip the pants entirely off him, watching Will return to the trembling balance of standing on his toes in pleasure.

He takes his time to kiss his way up his leg, against the knee, thigh, higher still… before he stops. Smug. And kisses Will’s lower back instead.

“Earn harder,” he growls, deeply amused.

A silent laugh tightens Will's stomach and he runs his tongue along his lip. His fingers adjust to get more comfortable, and he lowers himself at least onto the balls of his feet, still prone and open and entirely aching with pleasure. Bruises in livid crimsons and blues across his, the red lines of a bite against his shoulder.

Will draws a breath that fills him and releases it slowly, a trembling sigh.

"Better?" Will murmurs, distantly amused with his head turned enough that he can see Hannibal behind him, watching narrowly the pleasure writ wide across his face.

For at least a moment, Will has managed himself to stillness, painfully hard but spread motionless across the harpsichord, as eager to please as to be pleased.

And for a moment, Hannibal leaves him, sits back to allow himself to admire the view, painfully hard in his own pants as he watches Will breathe slowly and evenly against the intricate instrument.

When he reaches out, it’s to draw his fingers warm and light over Will’s skin, tracing the bruises with feather touches, watching goosebumps mar Will’s skin in a moment of involuntary response. He continues touching, over his thighs and up higher, pressing his fingers gently against the dip behind Will’s balls, drawing a beautiful arch in his back and a whimper from his mouth.

The caresses continue until Will trembles but doesn’t move, one arm stretched far across the top of the harpsichord, his forehead pressed against it, fist curled hard against the wood. His other hand curls below the keyboard, knuckles white.

Will’s breathing hitches, his voice low on Hannibal’s name when Hannibal leans in at last to draw the flat of his tongue from Will’s perineum and higher, pushing his tongue in deep and holding Will spread as he starts a slow deliberate rhythm against him.

Fingers stretching desperate for movement, toes curling hard into the carpet, Will fights hard to maintain his position, his entire body pulled taut with pleasure and resistance to it. Lips parted, dry with the little panting sighs that plume in pale across the smooth surface of the harpsichord, he can't hold back a whimper, swallowing hard.

"Please," begs Will, his limbs shaking weak with the effort of holding himself in place, of holding himself back from the writhing twisting feeling that snaps up his spine with every press of Hannibal's tongue inside of him. He wets his lips, his breath a shuddering, unsteady thing inside his ribs, clenching fingers back over the top of the harpsichord to steady himself as his pulse hums loud in his ears.

Aching hard, an involuntary twist of hips, his length grazing the keys where minutes before their fingers rested.

Hannibal hums, the vibration sending Will to shaking, and forgives him the motion, forgives him further infractions just to see him like this. Open, willing, eager and so beautiful in his utter pleasure.

He brings one hand down to curl his fingers over Will’s cock, tight at the base to keep his orgasm at bay as he pulls back.

“Breathe, Will,” he whispers, nuzzling the damp skin of his back, “Just a little longer for me.”

Will presses forward against Hannibal's hand, a jerk of hips outside of his control. He clenches his teeth, groaning behind them, eyes shut and cheek pressed against the top of the harpsichord, his body now a dissonant thing, unsteady and erratic.

"Please," he pleads again, sweetly whimpering in that way he knows makes Hannibal growl. His toes lift off the carpet again but he forces them down, shaking from the effort of restraint. A sheen of sweat glistens along his body in the early morning sun, and he speaks in whispers snared tight in his throat, as desperate to move and squirm and writhe as his body demands it as he is for release.

"I need - I need you." Pleading, pliant, and as still as he can reasonably be, trained willingly and beautifully to Hannibal's hand.

Hannibal bites him, just soft, a possessive, reminding thing against his hip, and sits back, pulling Will with him until the other is spread out on his lap, legs on either side of Hannibal’s knees, head back and neck arched, one hand around to cling to Hannibal’s hair.

It won’t take long for Will to break, his entire body taut and shaking.

Hannibal’s hand is gentle, twisting exactly as he knows Will likes, drawing the side of his thumbnail under the head of his cock to feel Will writhe and cry out, voice loud and short in the empty room before he’s just panting again, desperate and close.

Hannibal kisses his neck, tastes the swallow that moves his throat, and brings his free hand down to cup the silky skin of Will’s balls. And it’s enough.

Will's fingers clench against Hannibal's hair, grasping as he whimpers faint, broken noises and his back arches sharply. He buries the sounds against Hannibal's neck, staggering soft sighs against his skin as Hannibal pulls his release from him, stripes of heat across his belly and Hannibal's firm fingers as they glide over the slit of his cock to feel Will's release against him.

His heart shudders, eyes opening just enough that he can see Hannibal's hand around him, hips still rolling in the echoes of his orgasm.

He draws a breath suddenly, stomach tightening with a laugh, and wraps his other arm up around Hannibal’s shoulder.

"I am," Will finally says, swallowing hard, "very lucky."

Hannibal grins, a warm, genuine expression, and turns Will's head to kiss him.

"Perhaps," he murmurs, "you will do better next time."

He nuzzles Will, affectionate, soft, loving.

"And make no mistakes with your Chopin."

Head tilting, allowing Hannibal to nuzzle warmth against his neck, flushed and warm and adored and with no one other movement in the world around them but their own composition of harmonic discord, Will smiles.

“Then I’ll have to practice more.”

 


	7. Expectation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the first time since this started, Hannibal's eyes narrow in genuine displeasure. He watches Will finish his glass and stops him when he shifts to turn to get the bottle for another.
> 
> "I am not in the habit of sharing," he says softly, "things that are mine, Will."

“I brought something for dinner.”

Will meets Hannibal’s smile with one of his own, offering out a nearly-full bottle of scotch. He hands it off and brushes the snow out of his hair before stepping inside, and ducks down to unlace his boots and set them beside the door. In the warmth of the house, the snow pools beneath them, on the tile rather than strewn across the carpets.

Part guest, part something else entirely.

“Ten-year single malt,” Will continues, knowing he doesn’t need to. “I had a little earlier. It tastes like a bog. Or how bogs are supposed to taste, apparently. Not sure who decided to find that out first.” Clearly intended as praise - at least from what Will read off the bottle - but aware that his own palate is virtually nonexistent next to Hannibal’s own.

Just as Hannibal is aware that Will seems to have had more than a little of the expensive drink, and not that much earlier, smelling strongly to Hannibal’s nose of whiskey warmth so fresh it’s still hot on Will’s tongue.

Hannibal allows Will to just keep talking, his words coherent and over articulated,  but very quick. Almost as though he wants to get them out before he forgets, before the articulation and coherency ends.

“I’ve had it for a while. A gift from another professor.” Will peels out of his coat, hanging it above his shoes and looping his scarf over the top. “Waiting for a reason to drink it that isn’t just ‘it’s a day that ends in -y’, although that’s usually reason enough,” he adds, removing his gloves and running a hand over his face, beneath snow-spotted glasses, cheeks flushed bright.

"Thank you," is all Hannibal says, welcoming Will into the house unnecessarily - he knows his way around it better than anyone else.

He takes in the nervous gestures, the smile that's wider than Will’s actual enthusiasm implies.

He looks, in a word, scared.

It makes Hannibal swallow, heart thudding thick and slow against his chest. Regardless he follows Will into the kitchen, sets the bottle on the counter and runs a hand across Will's lower back in a comforting gesture.

Will relaxes instantly beneath the touch, pressing himself into the warm contact until it’s drawn away and then turning to lean against the counter. A distant smile flickers briefly at a memory spurred by the feel of cold marble beneath his hands.

"May I ask what your reason is for drinking it today?" Hannibal asks, a smile curling his lips on the next words. "I assure you, Mr. Graham, it will take more effort to seduce me. Though it is appreciated."

“I didn’t realize I needed to put in an effort,” Will muses, sliding his fingers along the smooth surface. “Besides the Chopin, anyway.”

He takes in the scene of dinner half-prepared, back from Wolf Trap faster than either expected him to be. A pot simmering on the stove and heat in the two-tiered oven and vegetables chopped and waiting.

He takes in Hannibal, sleeves folded carefully to his elbows and apron looped around his neck and an intense gaze, curious and sharp, as Will lets his gaze travel up the length of him.

An opportune moment to remove his glasses, when their eyes meet, to wipe them free of snow.

“I thought it would be nice,” Will finally answers. “Sharing it. Before we go back.” A pause, scarcely the length of a heartbeat. “If you’ve never lectured on insect succession to disinterested freshman while hydrating through a hangover, you haven’t lived.”

Hannibal's eyes narrow in a smile.

"Perhaps that is a lesson in living I will allow you to tell me, not teach me,” he says, eyes on Will again, careful and calculating. Then he turns away, seeks in a cupboard for two glasses and sets them on the counter.

Will's still focused on cleaning his lenses, deliberately distracted, and Hannibal sets the bottle nearer so Will is encouraged to pour. He does, careful, and takes a long practiced sip from his own glass.

"I thought we could do something simple, today," Hannibal says after a moment, turning away to check on the stove. “A soup. Homemade bread. Enough to be filling but not require a lot of difficult clean up. Like you said, tomorrow we must both return to work."

He pauses, sets his teeth against his top lip gently when Will can’t see, before letting it go. He knows Will has come up with his excuse and reason for the damage on his face - a dog got in the way at an inopportune moment - but he wonders if the profiler will be able to keep up a lie as easily for the damage the separation will cause.

Hannibal wonders if he himself will be able.

The week had proven not only necessary but comforting. Warm. Something he can already feel he will miss greatly.

He stirs the soup and resists walking to Will’s side to kiss him. He hears Will take another sip and sighs.

Will swirls his scotch as he watches. It's a large pot, too much for both of them, and he knows that Hannibal has deliberately made extra, despite that he doesn't abide the idea of leftovers, but undoubtedly aware of Will's tendency to forget to eat. A smile, unseen, and he takes another sip.

He sets his glass on a napkin, rather than directly on the counter, and before he can hold himself back he pushes off the counter to wrap his arms loose around Hannibal from behind, sinking into him and resting his forehead against Hannibal's shoulder.

Something twists in him and he spreads his palms over Hannibal's stomach, fingers curling against the apron. He tucks himself into the curve of Hannibal’s neck, breathing him in, a closeness that spurs him to speak again, to fill the space between them.

"Do you have a lot of patients tomorrow?" Small talk, as Hannibal adds the vegetables to the roiling soup. Domesticity, or something very like it. “I’m sure they’ll be glad you’re back, more than my classes will be to see me. They’ll have to actually do work again.”

Will reaches past Hannibal to snare a forgotten carrot slice from the counter, tossing it into the pot, and then steers Hannibal's glass closer to him before drawing away, letting the warmth leave them to take up his whiskey instead.

"I promise, you don't want me to finish this on my own," he says into his glass with mild amusement, swallowing the words that itch beneath his tongue by taking another drink. He rests back against the counter again, looseness in his limbs, watching Hannibal with a curiosity he can’t suppress with liquor.

Hannibal considers the drink, considers the words, and takes the glass up carefully.

The liquid within is dark, smoky, sits warm and heavy on his tongue and slides down smoothly in his throat. A very worthy gift. Yet something still sets Hannibal on edge with the presence of it here, with the significant absence of the alcohol in the bottle when Will had arrived.

"I have very quiet Mondays," Hannibal admits,  turning the heat down to a slow simmer, and looking at Will over his shoulder. "Two clients and the possibility for a third if another appointment needed to be made."

He steps closer, barely a step from Will where he leans, and brings the glass to his lips again, watching Will’s eyes follow the motion, the swallow after.

"Must we finish it?" he asks, whether addressing Will’s comment or something that hums under their skin is to be interpreted.

Will watches the glass, the way Hannibal’s mouth moves to drink, to form the words, and feels his face grow hot before he lowers his gaze.

"I'm not sure when there'll be another occasion for something like this," Will finally responds, with another sip. He licks his lower lip into his mouth, tasting the scald of the scotch and the acidity that lingers beneath it.

The whiskey sings warm through Will now, a false heat with which he’s well acquainted in place of actual warmth, quieting worries in steady waves until he lets himself slip beneath them. The thought of following that old routine is a welcome one, at least in place of the questions that nag unceasing for answers.

“It’s yours now, either way,” Will relents, unable to draw back the distance in his eyes. There’s shadows, darkness manifesting in the corners just out of sight, and he speaks before he can stop himself or the burn that singes the edges of his words.

“You can share it with Dr. Bloom when you see her.”

For the first time since this started, Hannibal's eyes narrow in genuine displeasure. He watches Will finish his glass and stops him when he shifts to turn to get the bottle for another.

"I am not in the habit of sharing," he says softly, "things that are mine, Will."

He closes the distance enough to feel Will against him, his own head ducked as Will's is raised. His eyes are wide and expectant, entirely open. Will looks tired, like one expecting disappointment.

Resigned.

_Abandonment requires expectation._

Hannibal sighs, brings a hand up to stroke Will's hair from his face.

"What are you doing, Will?" he asks softly, leaning to kiss the corner of his eye. "Breathe."

Will doesn't resist the touch, but he goes tense beneath it, eyes closing and jaw working into a terse semblance of a smile.

"Self-destruction as a coping mechanism," Will echoes from some long-ago diagnosis, and he goes quiet. He's already said enough, already affirmed that he can't be trusted to speak when he's here like this, whiskey-brave with Hannibal so close.

He grasps Hannibal's wrist, thumb brushing over the scar there, and pulls his doctor's hand down from his hair to draw it against his mouth instead. A kiss is pressed to Hannibal's palm, desperately soft.

It says everything without saying anything.

Hannibal lets him, tilts his head just barely to watch him. Will clings to him with a fear he rarely shows. And Will deals with inordinate amounts of fear.

But not like this.

Residual fear on a scene, from his nightmares, but all things he can distance from. Not from this. This is Will laying himself on the table before Hannibal and passing him a knife, trusting he will hit true and not force him suffering.

Hannibal murmurs Will’s name before he gently extricates his hand and leans to take the bottle up to look at it. He doesn't step away.

"There is time before dinner," he says gently.

Will watches the bottle, and considers it for longer than he should. Drinking until they say all the things they mean but never put to words. Drinking until there’s nothing left to say. A mutually assured destruction, a final combustion to immolate them both and leave them as ash, crumbling soft and irreparably transformed. A resolution that Will understands clearly and with intimate familiarity, offering a grim relief in satisfying his resigned expectations.

He shakes his head, a movement so small it would hardly be noticed by anyone less astute than Hannibal.

"Not if I have to get back tonight," Will finally says, but then, like something inside cracks, with a little pain and spilling warmth, he adds suddenly, "I don't want to go back tonight." A swallow, hard, irritated with his own words and the way they fall from his mouth soft and quick like snow, like blood.

"I don't want to finish it."

Hannibal's brows furrow just enough, and he sets the bottle down.

"I do not invite you to send you away, Will," he assures him. Wonders if Will believes a word.

What awaits them after this evening? A return to their working schedules, Will's despondency,  Hannibal's tedium, 7:30 Wednesday appointments.

Again and again until their spiral widens and contracts again, like a heartbeat.

The thought wakes something in Hannibal that mirrors Will’s panic. He doesn't know if he can force indifference.

He tilts Will’s head up and kisses him, tasting the hot liquor there, the sourness beneath it. Beneath that, Will. Just Will.

"Take the bread from the oven, please," he says quietly, eyes barely open. "It must cool before dinner."

Another kiss, chaste.

"I will wake you early tomorrow for your transit," he murmurs finally.

Will grasps Hannibal before he can withdraw, hands wrapped gently in his shirt. A breath shared between their mouths carries on it a small sound, aching relief, before Will kisses him again. He lets it linger, lets it carry for him all the gratitude and apprehension snarled inside until he feels it start to untangle.

And he lets him go, and he manages an almost-smile when Hannibal traces his knuckles along Will's cheek, and he watches when Hannibal returns to preparing dinner as though nothing had changed at all.

Behind him, Will removes his glasses and leaves them on the counter. He runs a hand over his face, lets it rest for a moment, and makes himself remember to breathe.

He snares Hannibal's glass as he passes, taking a sip not out of need but out of desire, before going to the oven to remove the bread.

Domesticity, or something very like it.

They eat, and don't talk much when they do, but Will finds Hannibal's leg beneath the table. He keeps his own pressed close against it until they're done, when he winds his way through the house, fingers trailing the walls, and settles across the couch in the living room where he's already found himself so many times.

There's something stirring in Will when Hannibal finds him there again, a snowfall building behind stormy blue eyes. He bites his lip as a barricade, and studies Hannibal in inches as he approaches.

"I don't want her to be hurt," Will says, quiet insistence. "I don't," a stammer, swallowed stubbornly, "I don't want you to stop. With her." He smiles and it falters a little when he does. "Or me."

"Selfish," he adds, to himself, and he rests his arm across his brow.

Hannibal sets his hands gently in his pockets as he stands over Will, watching. He had seen the contents of his glass slowly disappear, before dinner. After it.

"I have a great fondness for Alana," he says, truthful. Of all his students, of most in their shared field, Alana was not only clever but interesting. He doesn't regret what they started, though he does regret how it will hurt her to end it.

"I hold a great affection for you," he adds, emphasis on the word that differentiates Alana from Will for him.

Will studies him as he speaks, watches his lips form the words and memorizes the shapes they make, and he knows there’s not enough scotch in the world that would be able to make him forget them.

Someday, he will try and he will fail, again and again.

Will makes room for Hannibal by drawing himself up to sit, knees to his chest and bare feet planted into the soft velvet, his socks discarded somewhere between the kitchen and the couch. Hannibal scarcely settles into the seat before Will stretches closer and loops his arms around the older man’s neck, pulling himself into Hannibal’s lap and pressing his mouth against his throat.

Soft kisses, slow and heavy with an adoration that sends his pulse humming. More than affection, a reverence that would scare him with its intensity if he could see it clearly enough through the haze of warmth and whiskey.

Through that haze, a murmur, hesitant.

“So what happens tomorrow?”

Hannibal sighs, a long, low sound, and settles his hands on either side of Will's middle, curled just gently inwards.

"Tomorrow I will wake you early,” he tells him. "You'll fight me on it, press closer from the cold, murmur soft incoherent things."

Will laughs against him, the sound vibrating over Hannibal's skin.

"I will be unmoved." Hannibal smiles, one hand moving to Will’s hair to card through it.

"You will go to Wolf Trap. Feed your dogs. Go to class and lecture."

He feels Will tense against him just enough.

"Then you will go home,” he finishes softly, stroking his nails over Will's scalp. "You will feed your dogs. Set to tying a new lure."

He turns his face to breathe against Will’s hair.

"It will be dark when I finish work. Late. But I will bring dinner. Force you to eat even a little before I take you to bed."

"Me and the dogs, most likely," responds Will, quieting his relief beneath faint amusement. "They'll be happy to see you."

Will sinks deeper against Hannibal, lips brushing soft across his ear. "Remember to bring another suit with you this time, so you don't have to leave so early to get back. Even though you'll think about doing it anyway when I put my feet on you to warm them up."

He kisses his temple when Hannibal hums bemused agreement, grateful when he feels the incessant clicking of the pendulum muffle to stillness. He can't let himself think about how he'll have to go see Jack tomorrow, too, and the pieces that remain of Randall Tier.

He can't let himself think of anything beyond _this_ , _here_ , _with you_ , because now, right now, for all his doubt it seems so painfully _possible_.

Will's brows draw in, just a little, and he drags his leg over Hannibal to straddle his lap instead, to press even closer. His arms wrap tight around Hannibal's neck again, foreheads pressed together, eyes closed.

"What happens next week?" Will asks softly, more a sigh than a question. Musing, tipsy and warm. Filter sanded down to near nothing.

Hannibal moves his hands to rest against the insides of Will's knees, pulling him closer. He nudges Will’s face up with his own.

"Next week you will limp," he whispers, "if you wake me with your shifting again." He smiles, pulling Will just a little closer by spreading his thighs.

"I expect I'll have a limp either way," Will grins, pleased and coy, sliding a hand back through Hannibal's hair.

"I will train you to get enough sleep. To eat properly. To cook more than breakfast." He kisses Will softly. "You will teach me to brew coffee in a copper pot."

"Since I finish work before you, I can pick up your suits from the cleaner you like, before I come over," Will adds, watching the darkness of Hannibal's eyes. "Sometimes you'll bring me lunch because you know I didn't bring anything, when I leave late because I don't want to get out of bed with you."

Will rocks closer to him, letting their mouths meet when he does. He catches Hannibal's lower lip lightly between his teeth and releases it just as quickly.

"We'll play music together. Maybe I'll even practice," Will offers, before he suddenly grins again, cheeks flushed bright. "Probably not, though. Only with you."

Hannibal smiles, enjoying Will like this. More open, softer. He's noticed Will reverting less and less to his mind, hiding fewer and fewer things behind the swinging pendulum.

He brings his hands to Will’s shirt to undo it, slowly, sliding one to his lower back then to bend Will up against his mouth.

He devours Will slowly, kisses every scar that he knows by heart, presses his tongue to the flushed skin.

He kisses lower, sucks a nipple until it peaks, until Will shivers, his words warm and trembling when he speaks again.

"We'll wake up late, on the weekend," Will gasps, words caught in his throat as Hannibal moves to the other nipple. "I'll make food for you, then. Won't overcook the eggs.” A pause. “Might overcook the eggs. But I’ll make coffee."

Will needs this, needs all of this more than words can convey but words are all he has and he can't stop them now, not when Hannibal's hands are supporting him in a pliant bend and his mouth is so warm with promise, moving in a slow line down his chest.

"You'll help me put in a new window," Will murmurs lightly, “so the floors aren't as cold. Even though you'd rather call someone."

"And I'll show you the woods. All of them. We'll go out with the dogs and I won't talk about killing you." He swallows hard, eyes open just enough to watch Hannibal's lips against his skin, a flash of teeth, a broad swipe of tongue.

It's worship, what Hannibal's mouth is doing. And Will is breathless, speechless with the knowledge that something so dangerous can do something so tender.

Hannibal stops, looks up. A moment of nothing then he lets his hands linger warm on Will’s shoulders as he slides his shirt off them, eyes on Will's, unblinking, dark.

When he looks away, it's to see the bruises that adorn Will's skin, purples and yellows, angry reds. Bruises Will had asked for, those Hannibal has tried to erase with soft lips and gentle sighs.

He rests the pads of his fingers over the one at Will's neck, relishing when he arches to it, tilts his head back, parts his lips. Will is beautiful to him. Lithe and strong and clever. A remarkable, brave boy.

Hannibal wants to give him everything.

"What else, Will?" he asks, his other hand drawing cool knuckles down Will’s middle before stroking him slowly through his pants, feeling Will harden to fill his grip.

He keeps his eyes up, fingers of his free hand splayed on Will’s neck as he shifts to bite gently against his collarbone.

Will's fingers work the button free of his pants and he snares Hannibal's hand in his, presses it firmly beneath his boxers and his whole body convulses when he feels that warmth against him there, not out of need but out of desire. He makes a sound, an aching little moan sweet and soft like he's never been touched that way before.

In some ways, he hasn't.

"We'll go to the river when it's warm again. You'll read while I fish even though the dogs will want your attention and then," Will's voice jumps sharp and whimpering beneath another soft, claiming bite. "We'll walk home and cook the fish I caught and you'll tell me about your book and - fuck," he gasps as Hannibal rubs slow against him, and laughs.

"Yes. That."

Will starts to reach for the buttons of Hannibal's shirt but resists, instead skimming his hands along Hannibal's arms, curving his body to Hannibal's design and giving himself over to being caught like Ganymede ensnared, held fast in knife-sharp talons gentled against his skin that still possess and protect and claim.

"You'll take me to the opera, at least once," Will muses, breathless. "I won't want to go but you'll convince me, like you always do. You'll get me to wear a suit even though - ah," he draws a breath as Hannibal's teeth graze his skin, forgets his words and continues on happily anyway. “I won't understand what's happening  while we're watching but you'll explain it to me after, since it's rude to talk during the performance."

"I'll like the way you tell the story more."

There's a distant, gentle pleasure to Will's voice, as though he can hear the music and feel Hannibal's hand brush his leg when the theatre goes dark, imagination roaming unbridled. There's no one else but them, no place or time that is not theirs alone, and Will wonders if it's possible to pretend so hard that you can never stop.

He pushes a hand back through Hannibal's hair, smoothing it back from his face and tilting him up to face him again. Will slips his fingers down to trace the rises and falls of Hannibal's lips.

"Tell me."

He knows Will won’t stop now, his voice rising and trembling, deep with breathlessness and need. He's perfect like this.

"I'll buy you suits," Hannibal says. "Get them fitted. Gray and blue, subtle patterns." Hannibal curls his palm over the head of Will's cock and rubs, savoring the gasps that become quick needy pants against his skin.

"I will check that you wear them," he promises, voice low, dark. "Make it worth your time when you do until you learn."

His hands curl in Will’s shirt hard and hold him still.

"Until you learn to associate the feeling of heavy silk with my mouth against you."

Will slides both hands back through Hannibal's hair, faint smile breaking into a huffed laugh.

"You think I don't feel it all the time already?"

He presses a kiss to Hannibal's forehead, mouth lingering against him as he arches up into the touch, hips rolling languid against Hannibal's hand - unhurried, delighting in every stroke and the shivers they send cascading down his spine.

"I feel it every time I see you," Will sighs, voice lifting into a moan as Hannibal turns his wrist just so. "Every time I think about you. I can't -" a sharp breath, a stammer. "I can't stop."

He catches his lip in his teeth, holds it for a few heavy breaths, and lets the storm that just stirred inside him pass for now, scarcely held at bay.

Will leans back, hands braced on Hannibal's knees, eyes darting heavy-lidded between Hannibal's hand stroking beneath his pants, and the older man's mouth, lips parting in sympathetic response as Hannibal wets his own, a brief glimpse of tongue.

"I'm still going to wear your sleep pants," Will adds instead, with a crooked grin.

Hannibal smiles, watching Will gently undulate against the hand on him, a wanton thing.

He thinks of just how much of Will he has made his, and of that how much he refuses to see Will change from himself. He knows that Will would wear the suits Hannibal insisted on, would go to the opera, would drink the fine expensive wines...

He also knows that the morning after, he would find the suit on the floor, a mess of rich fabric, and Will in the kitchen in his boxers humming La Bohéme and drinking awful plunger coffee, cold.

He knows and he wants nothing else.

Both hands circle Will's middle and Hannibal kisses him, open-mouthed and hungry, before turning to set his knee against the couch, gently tilt Will back so he's lying prone.

"I'll let you," he whispers against his lips.

The tilt is gentle, but Will drops back with all his weight, flopping against the couch with a grin and curls of hair in his face. He shoves down his pants, kicks them to the floor, and grasps Hannibal's shirt to pull him firmly closer, feeling his weight over him as their mouths meet again.

"You'll get dog hair on your suits when you bring them over," he teases, as pleased as Hannibal's ever seen him, relaxed and open and curling the length of his body up against his doctor. "But I'll get a lint roller, so you can try to get it off before you go."

Will rides a leg alongside Hannibal's hip, drapes it over him to pull him closer still.

He doesn't talk about how they'd still work together, overlooking horrible things that will fuel Will's nightmares when he can't shake them off. He doesn't talk about how he knows that sometimes, those horrors would be Hannibal's own work, and he'd have to avoid his eyes and pretend like he doesn't know.

He doesn't talk about how he _would_ pretend that, and how every time he would fear for them both.

It's too comfortable now, to just allow himself to hope that this won't all suddenly end, that they can make this work somehow, and pressing his fingers to Hannibal's mouth to feel the way it moves against his neck makes it so easy to believe.

"I'll still leave my socks on the floor," Will whispers, eyes closing as Hannibal kisses down the blush that's bled from his cheeks onto his neck and chest. "And I won't mention it when you start to do it, too."

"Never." The word is pressed into Will’s skin, as he laughs and squirms in Hannibal's hands.

This.

They could keep this.

For a few moments, the only sounds are Will’s quick breathing, the shift of fabric as he grasps for Hannibal’s shirt. It's late now, the cold locked firmly outside by the double-glazed windows. Not yet snowing.

Hannibal sinks low enough to nuzzle Will’s navel, to brush his lips over the warm trail of hair leading down between the V curve of Will's hips.

When he takes Will into his mouth, it's gentle, a slow suck that sends Will’s back rigid in pleasure. Hannibal looks up, watches the pleasure write itself over Will's entire form. Then he takes him deeper.

Will gasps Hannibal's name, fingers tangled in his hair, and then he sighs it again, choked softly in his throat as Hannibal's tongue works against him. Like a cry in the wild, a redemption born of suffering. How Hannibal's name should be said, a reminder to them both, again and again as Will rolls his hips against him, a name breathed not with spite and bitterness and venom but with a tenderness that's far more terrifying than any of those things.

He pushes himself upward against the arm of the couch, propping up enough that he can watch Hannibal's lips curve around him, watch the aristocracy in his features shift and change, debauched and smugly satisfied as a quick press of his tongue against Will's slit draws a deep groan out of the younger man.

Hannibal has a way of stealing Will's words from him, and Will watches it happen, eager and breathless from beneath the mess of his hair as Hannibal works Will to shaking, watches his legs spreading wider, back arching in a way that suggests he no longer has control of his body.

He tugs Will further back down on the couch, smirking when Will bites his lip, tilts his hips.

"Greedy,” he murmurs. "Not today, Will."

Instead he leans closer, takes Will's fingers between his lips and slicks them, hungry and slow. Then he directs Will’s hand down, presses his fingers against his hole.

When Will moans, soft, flushes with understanding and presses his fingers in, Hannibal sits back to start to undress himself. Eyes on Will's - a challenge, praise, hunger there.

Will shivers up through his shoulders as he works his fingers deeper in increments, cheeks bright and fever-hot while he watches Hannibal. Little panting breaths rise and fall fast as Hannibal's fingers work slowly down the buttons of his vest and slide loose the knot of his tie, setting each neatly aside in turn.

The languorous unfastening of his shirt nearly undoes Will and he moans, arching his hips against his own eager fingers and watching with the same curiosity and desire as when he quietly observes Hannibal dress in the morning. But this is a removal of all the masks and armor Hannibal applies each day, equally composed and equally exquisite with each precise movement, infuriatingly patient in all he does.

He's extraordinary in his control, over himself and over Will as Hannibal lifts his chin just a little, an approving motion that spurs Will to spread himself wider still, eager to please and be pleased in kind. He earns the hint of a smile in reward for this, and Will arches off the couch, to ease the aching affection that rends itself through his lungs.

"Only you," Will whispers, and he means it. He means it more than his words allow now, more than he could describe tonight or tomorrow or next week or by summer or with all the time in the world. No one else could undo him with a look, whose words wound him with such wonderful pain that he feels like he can't even breathe for all they share.

"Yours."

The word pulls a sigh from Hannibal, a pleased curl of his lip. He swallows, sitting back for a moment, eyes on Will still as he breathes:

"Wider."

He watches Will pause at the word, blinking wide, before he obeys, draws his knees up and gasps when his fingers sink deeper, stroke over his prostate. He stops, thighs trembling, and Hannibal's jaw works.

"Again."

Will blinks, directs his eyes down as Hannibal’s hands move to undo his belt, pull it from the loops and bend it in his hand.

"Again." He says softly.

"Anything," Will responds through a gasp, and he means that, too. He's killed, dismembered, debased himself, pried open truths he's never shared with anyone and laid them bare. There's nothing left to do that he hasn't already done for Hannibal, and this - possessive and claiming and fiercely idolatrous - this is a pleasure compared to what's already passed.

And he hopes so much of what has been, has already passed.

His distraction, brief, is noted with a faint brow raised and Will bends beneath the look, stretches himself and moans, burying his fingers to the knuckle and curving to find that spot that Hannibal has shown him that makes him see stars. He rubs against it, bridging up onto his shoulders, and turning his head enough that he can still watch Hannibal, the curve of his mouth that entrances Will so.

Will swallows hard, and adds another finger, slow, careful, but with something like a coy defiance in the grin that catches his parted lips.

"Yours," he breathes again. "Only yours."

The belt is dropped to the floor without care, hands work deft against the button and zipper until Hannibal can stroke himself slowly, feeling his own pleasure spike with every soft sound Will makes.

When he catches Will’s hand to move it away, Hannibal curls it to kiss Will's knuckles gently, turns his face against them. The obedience, the willingness, the enjoyment he knows Will gets from this, is almost overwhelming.

"You own me, Will, like no one else,” he tells him, voice low but every single word spoken true. He presses Will’s hand down by his head, threads their fingers together.

His forehead presses gently with Will’s as he pushes in, holding eye contact that he has been granted, allowed, given.

"Mine,” he breathes, and presses his lips to Will’s before he can reply.

The words widen Will's eyes, draw out his pupils until there's scarcely a corona of pale blue around them. _Here, now, you_ the familiar refrain - _yes_ joining the chorus that makes him swallow hard. And when their lips part enough to breathe, Will catches Hannibal's lip just soft between his teeth, tugging lightly before he whispers with a grin in return, "Mine."

He wraps his arm around Hannibal's neck, to keep him close and to keep him there and to keep himself there, grounded.

Safe.

Secure.

Will wraps his legs over Hannibal's hips as tightly as his arm is looped, as tightly as their hands are pressed together. His body is heat, movement, energy, coiling fast and then relaxing just as suddenly with a sharp bend up against the older man working deep inside of him, pulse racing unabated and every breath a whimper.

"No one else," Will echoes, breath soft against Hannibal's ear, interrupted by a moan as Hannibal pushes deep again. A gentle laugh against Hannibal's neck when Will buries his face there. "Only you."

Hannibal sighs Will’s name against him and pushes harder. It's a slowly building rhythm that brings his hands against Will’s back, pulling him up closer.

It's falling into the abyss. Following a path forward of every possible event, for summers and winters together, dogs and fine wine and this.

Just this.

Hannibal tugs him closer still and kisses him.

 _Don't, Will_ , he thinks, pushes against Will’s mind, his pendulum, _don't let Jack destroy you, don't fall deep into your mind again_.

"Stay," he breathes, "stay here." _Stay now_.

Will runs his fingertips down Hannibal's face, across his mouth, and chases them with his lips.

"Where else would I go?"

It barely matters.

It's not need that drives Will here, now - seeking release fast and desperate, fierce and primal - it's desire and it’s the feel of Hannibal buried deep inside him and it’s the nearness of his heart and the way it jolts gently each time Will moans against his skin. The way his hands draw Will closer to him, they way their breath joins each time they kiss.

Hannibal's hair grasped between Will's fingers, Will guides him down, past his neck and collarbones and all the bruises to where his heart hammers in his chest, alive and wild, watching as Hannibal's mouth moves against his skin.

This another promise, made long ago between them, on the floor of an office after therapy had been declared insufficient.

And when their eyes meet again Will snares his arms around Hannibal's neck to pull himself upward, legs spread over Hannibal's thighs in a wide straddle, riding him slow and easy. Hannibal slows, draws them out longer, presses close.

It's warm, comfortable. He sits back, enough for Will to press his hands to his chest and push back.

Hannibal groans softly, feels the pleasure coil in his stomach, closer and closer, until he pushes up against Will and watches him with hooded eyes.

Leaning into him, Will rests his head against Hannibal's shoulder and watches, tracing his mouth with trembling fingers, the parted shape of them, the warmth of his breath. A quiet gasp pushes past his lips each time he takes Hannibal fully inside of him, working his body down on Hannibal's eager strokes.

"Hannibal," Will begs, a quiet little plea, and reaches to pull Hannibal's hand towards his own and grasp it, fingers wrapped tight together and palms pressed close. He runs his mouth over Hannibal's fingertips, breathless, and Hannibal groans, pleased, warm, and tilts Will’s head up with their joined hands to watch him, to see how quickly the control leaves him.

He doesn’t force Will to hold back, allows his own pleasure to take him in a hot swell and quick heartbeats and breaths. He murmurs Will’s name, ducks his head to rest against Will’s collarbone as his hands curl over Will’s shoulders and feel every twitch and tremble of his skin.

Hannibal's arms around him are all it takes for Will to tense suddenly, softly, with a choked sigh against Hannibal's neck. Shudders roll in waves down his spine, warmth catches slick and cools between them.

Will doesn't move away, doesn't flop back onto the couch or collapse with a groan. Just little echoes of relief that shiver through him, soothed beneath Hannibal's fingers. He nuzzles into the elegant curve where Hannibal's neck meets his shoulder and is finally quiet, to let their breath settle and their hearts calm.

Sliding slowly from Hannibal's lap, cheeks blooming bright and heat spreading damp between his thighs, Will lays back onto the couch and brings Hannibal's hand with him, to press his mouth against his palm with contentment. With relief.

Hannibal follows just far enough to curl an arm under Will’s shoulders and pull him back up, smiling at the displeased sound he gets in reply, ignoring all protests to just stay where they are.

Perhaps a time will come when he allows his meticulousness to waver, but it certainly doesn't now.

It takes coaxing, and kisses, soft hands and words to get Will upstairs and into bed. It doesn't take long for sleep to overcome his profiler, for the soft sounds of rest to murmur over Hannibal’s skin.

-

In the morning, Will groans, presses his forehead feverish with the ache of a hangover against Hannibal's hand as he wakes him. He takes the Advil, the cool water. Allows himself to be herded into the shower, grins in pleasure when he coaxes Hannibal in there with him.

It's still dark when Hannibal watches the headlights pull away down the street, wheels muffled by snow. Still dark when he returns to the kitchen, eyes on the bottle Will had brought - more than half finished and abandoned.

The sky is lightening with the promise of dawn when Hannibal returns from the basement, having set the bottle amongst the fine wines, unfinished.


End file.
